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THE DAILY TEXANwww.dailytexanonline.comServing the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900Tuesday, September 29, 2009
SPORTS PAGE 7Texas receivers stepping up 62
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TOMORROW’S WEATHERLIFE&ARTS PAGE 12Frittata makes for hearty
single-serving meal
By Lena Price Daily Texan Staff
Due to a 10 percent decrease in the amount of funding in the mathematics department’s tempo-rary instructor budget, the department will not be able to hire as many teaching or research assistants next year.
In addition to next year’s cuts, Dan Knopf, math-ematics graduate student adviser, warned seventh-year doctoral candidates at a meeting Thursday that they might lose their teaching assistant positions and their financial support if further budget cuts are implemented.
“I had the meeting to address the very legitimate concerns of the Ph.D. students in this time of eco-nomic crisis,” Knopf said. “I wanted to tell them that we have every intention of continuing support, but especially for seventh-year students, that is not clear. We wanted to give people enough time to make oth-er arrangements if it comes to this.”
There are currently 79 teaching assistants in the math department, but it is unclear how much the number will decrease next year.
All 124 of the mathematics doctoral candidates were offered five to six years of tuition reimburse-ment and health insurance upon acceptance to the University. Although the wording of the contracts has changed slightly over time, the financial assis-tance was guaranteed as long as progress was made toward the degree, barring a state financial crisis.
“Anyone who has been paying attention to the
By Audrey WhiteDaily Texan Staff
The Texas Department of Agriculture, Farm Cred-it Bank of Texas and over 400 restaurants statewide are teaming up to celebrate local food in the GO TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up.
Last year, the department offered a one-day event and, after its success, decided to expand the project. This year’s event, which began Mon-day and ends Friday, intends to showcase restau-rants that use locally produced meat and produce and encourages patrons to take advantage of those offerings.
“People are very interested in knowing where their food comes from. Any time you ship from county to county instead of across [the] country, you lower your carbon footprint and transportation costs,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. “There’s something special in every part of Texas. Beef, shrimp, wines, produce — they can all be found from your neighbor. The event celebrates that unique buying and dining experience.”
Local restaurants such as Changos Taqueria and Kerbey Lane Cafe are celebrating the week by of-fering special menu options and discounted pricing on Texas fare.
“It’s important for us to be involved because it fits in with our philosophy,” said Allison Bright, mar-keting director for Kerby Lane. “It’s always been important at Kerbey Lane to give back to our com-munity and provide good, local food at a reasonable price. Our chefs do seasonal menus because what-ever is growing, that’s what we’re going to make.”
In addition to showcasing local products, the event
FUNDS continues on page 2
Budget cuts loom for math students
Restaurants go localfor Round-Up week
EAT continues on page 6
By Alex GeiserDaily Texan Staff
In the back of a large room in the Harry Ransom Center, an old book dating back to the late 15th century lays open on a table under a microscope.
Two small, powerful lights illumi-nate the flaky paint on the concentric circles representing a step in the cre-ation of life. This copy of the Nurem-berg Chronicle awaits preservation at the humanities research center on campus. An intern will soon consol-idate the colors, thereby readhering the flakes to the aged pages.
The Harry Ransom Center con-serves its photography, paper and book collections through a variety of methods from minor repairs to pho-to re-emulsion. The center is main-ly used for research purposes, which
makes the main goal of conservators more functional than aesthetic.
“What we’re doing is going through documentation, which is
basically recording the physical as-pects of the book in minute detail and then noting the problems there are and what options there are to fix
them,” said UT graduate student Evan Knight, a part-time volunteer in the conservation department at the Harry Ransom Center.
A number of student volun-teers and interns work at the cen-ter; however, new students are not currently accepted to the conserva-tion program due to a lack of fund-ing. Knight said the grant money expired this year, and the program is in a transitional period.
Olivia Primanis, a book conser-vator who has been at the Ransom Center for 19 years, said the center maintains an approximate temper-ature of 70 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of 50 percent to create a stable environment for its artifacts.
By Vidushi ShrimaliDaily Texan Staff
On Thursday, some classes in the Department of Communication Sci-ences and Disorders will have ac-cess for two semesters to a virtual clinic, anatomy models and an ice-berg sound-simulation model on the Web site SecondLife.com.
Second Life is a virtual reality world that college campuses have been exploring recently as an alter-native educational tool. UT is one of over 200 members — including universities, museums and corpo-rations — of the New Media Con-sortium that aims to explore new venues of education and already
has a “virtual island” on Second Life. The UT System has spent a total of $250,000 on virtual land in Second Life, and each system cam-pus was allocated three 16-acre is-lands in the virtual program. UT al-ready owned five, pushing its total to eight islands.
Leslie H. Jarmon, faculty devel-
opment specialist in the Division of Instructional Innovation and As-sessment, contacted James Zeigler, a speech, language and hearing sci-ences assistant professor at North-ern Michigan University. The com-plex 3-D models Zeigler developed
By Bobby LongoriaDaily Texan Staff
The Austin Human Rights Commission unanimously passed a resolution for a morato-rium on the death penalty Mon-day. The proposal will be sent to the City Council within a week.
The resolution calls on the City Council “to pass a resolution recommending that the State of Texas enact a moratorium on ex-ecutions and create a ‘Texas Cap-ital Punishment Commission’ to study the administration of capi-tal punishment in Texas and cor-rect any injustices or unfair pro-cesses that are found in the ad-ministration of the death pen-alty.” The new resolution has gathered momentum in light of an independently produced August report, which the Tex-
as Forensic Science Commission will review Friday, that deter-mined Cameron Todd Willing-ham, a Corsicana man convict-ed of arson and the murder of three children in 2004, was exe-cuted based on incorrect analy-sis of the crime scene.
Commission member Delia Perez Meyer said if the morato-rium passes in the City Coun-cil it will label Austin as a “no -death penalty city” — a step to-ward a statewide moratorium.
Across the nation, 151 city councils have passed similar res-olutions that support a suspen-sion of the death penalty, and over 14 states in the nation have abolished the death penalty alto-gether. The human rights group was established by the City in 1967 to enforce the Civil Rights
Act, the Americans with Disabil-ities Act and the Age Discrimi-nation in Employment Act
Texas leads the nation in ex-ecutions with 441 since 1982. Since the death penalty was re-instated in 1976, nine people on death row in Texas have been exonerated of murder convic-tions and released while 135 have been exonerated and re-leased in the nation.
The commission passed a similar resolution for a morato-rium in 2005, but the City Coun-cil did not take it up for consid-eration at the time.
“Whenever you execute someone who didn’t actually commit the crime for which they are being executed, that innocent
Center lauds detail, preserves past
Photos by Erik Reyna | Daily Texan Staff
Above, Harry Ransom Center’s Head of Paper Conservation Stephanie Watkins cleans an old circus advertisement with a solution of water and calcium hydroxide. Old documents like this one are usually treated with solutions to remove acidity that deteriorate historical relics. Below, Harry Ransom Center book conservator Olivia Primanis prepares the Nuremberg Chronicle for preservation.ww
Michael Baldon | Daily Texan Staff
Juan Carbajal serves up a Cobb salad at Kerbey Lane Cafe. Kerbey Lane is participating in the “GO TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up.”
Second Life facilitates interactive virtual education
VIRTUAL continues on page 2
Michael Baldon | Daily Texan Staff
Thomas Davis, commission member, listens as Scott Cobb presents a resolution to the moratorium on the death penalty in Texas.
Resolution asks Council to eliminate death penalty
CENTER continues on page 2
DEATH continues on page 2
Graduate students’ financial backing insecure due to budget adjustments
DADAD ITexas receivers stepping up
Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900
1A11
NEWS Tuesday, September 29, 20092
TODAY’S WEATHER
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Dr. Henry, juvenile delinquent
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By Lara BerendtDaily Texan Staff
The Michael & Susan Dell Foun-dation committed $10 million to the creation of a Texas Student Data System which will give ed-ucators across the state timely ac-cess to students’ historical atten-dance, disciplinary and perfor-mance data.
The Texas Education Agency plans to use the grant to update its current system, the Public Educa-tion Information Management Sys-tem, by improving the collection and distribution of data for K-12 students and allowing more effi-
cient tracking of students as they move from one school or district to another, said agency spokeswom-an DeEtta Culbertson.
“This will give us a better snap-shot of the student, their achieve-ments and their records,” Culbert-son said.
The new system will use the wealth of data the agency already collects for financial and compli-ance reasons — such as ensuring enrollment fees are paid accu-rately and tracking dropout rates — and organize the system to make it more accessible to teach-ers, said Adam Jones, the agen-cy’s deputy commissioner of fi-nance and administration and chief operating officer.
“We’re data-rich in Texas and have been for a long time,” Jones
said. “The key here is that Texas needs to be more forward-thinking in putting actionable data out there to school districts, educators, par-ents and taxpayers.”
Jones said though universities throughout the state will have ac-cess to student academic records through the data system, admis-sion decisions will still be based on high school transcripts.
Increased data aggregation and reporting should not cause pub-lic concern over issues of privacy, Jones said. All TEA data collection processes adhere to the strict regu-lations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, he said.
“We’ve always been very cogni-zant of data security,” Jones said.
The new system will not be im-plemented right away, said agen-
cy spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe. She said the agency will launch a pilot program a year from now in a limited number of school districts followed by full system implemen-tation in all 1,031 districts within five or six years.
The cost to construct the entire system is projected to be $50 to $60 million, Ratcliffe said.
“The Dell grant is a great start for us, but we also plan to seek funding through the federal stim-ulus and stabilization funds that the president has made available, which we hope will pay for the rest of it,” Ratcliffe said.
More efficient, dashboard-style organization of student data relat-ing to standardized test scores, dis-ciplinary actions, other classes a stu-dent is enrolled in, siblings enrolled
at the same school and attendance will aid teachers in understand-ing why certain students are hav-ing difficulty in school, said Megan Matthews, spokeswoman for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
Matthews said other states have various ongoing data projects but none quite as extensive as the an-ticipated new Texas system. When the existing 104 different data col-lection systems are streamlined, the results will engage educators across the state to define what in-formation they need to best help students, she said.
“The innovation in what Tex-as will do is in providing a time-ly and historical snapshot of a stu-dent,” Matthews said. “This will really put Texas at the forefront of data-driven decision making.”
State receives grant to update data system DEATH: Austin commission supports ban
From page 1
Dell Foundation funds improvements to student records maintenance
Erik Reyna | Daily Texan Staff
Windsor Park Elementary Assistant Principal Audrey Eden reads a book while waiting for friends at Enoteca Vespaio. Eden traveled from Corpus Christi to attend an educational conference in Austin.
CENTER: Top conservators detail methods
VIRTUAL: UT hopes online land investment will pay off
The center conserves and preserves rather than restores — restoration involves recreat-ing an artifact to make it appear much like its former self. Pri-manis said she simply mends and reapplies what is there.
“We stabilize what is there for patrons more than fix-ing things to make them look good,” she said.
Mary Baughman, another book conservator at the center, said an important aspect of her job is to keep the history of the piece intact.
“If we make a drastic altera-tion to a book, that part of his-tory is lost,” she said.
As Baughman carefully lifts the discolored cover of a book from 1516, she gently tugs at a loose gathering of pages, the result of a break in the original threading. She plans to restitch the gathering back into the book, once again allowing it to be used for research purposes.
Baughman pulls out a small jar of a homemade, precipitat-ed wheat starch-based paste. “We are very particular about our paste,” she said while slid-ing a bookmark from a book on her shelf with the recipe on the back and the statement “Know your paste” on the front.
In the adjacent room, Steph-anie Watkins, head of paper conservation, stands over a tub of a slightly discolored solution of water and calcium hydrox-ide used to clean old papers. To Watkins’ right is the saturated poster she just pulled from the solution, drip-drying between two layers of non-woven poly-ester sheets laid on a Plexiglas board. The polyester enables her to lift the poster from the tub without the danger of tear-ing it.
“The solution pulls out the acidity that deteriorates the pa-per,” she said.
Down the hallway, head of photograph conservation Bar-bara Brown removes a long panoramic photograph of UT faculty taken before 1930 from its protective covering. She said when they received the picture, it was curled up and hardened to the point where stretching it would cause it to crumble. She said it was then placed in a hu-midifying chamber where the paper and emulsion absorbed enough moisture to loosen the photo’s fibers.
An intern was then able to mend the photograph using thin Japanese tissue paper and paste. Brown said the intern spent between 30 and 40 hours on the process.
The Nuremberg Chronicle, which awaits conservation, is one of at least three copies housed in the Harry Ransom Center. Once the flakes of col-or are readhered and minor flaws are corrected, this arti-fact of 15th century life will be sent to the Rubin Museum of Art next winter.
for his anatomy and physiolo-gy classes on Second Life are an attractive asset for UT stu-dents that could be brought to Austin through the virtu-al world. For two semesters, Zeigler will serve as UT’s first Virtual Visiting Scholar and a “guest lecturer” online.
“Anatomy can be kind of boring and dull and not fun, and when I first heard of Sec-ond Life, I thought of a mov-ie from my childhood called ‘Fantastic Voyage’, where this group of scientists are shrunk-en into microscopic size and enter the bloodstream of this diplomat to save his life,” Zei-gler said.
Jarmon said she is optimis-tic about the benefits UT stu-dents will gain from Zeigler’s models.
“Looking at a picture in a book is one thing, but being able to walk through the mod-
el is a whole different experi-ence,” she said.
A virtual specialist helped Zeigler develop massive vir-tual ear and larynx models large enough for an avatar to explore. The program will also feature a 15-layer iceberg to demonstrate human sound perception.
Students’ avatars are the size of ladybugs in proportion to the virtual ear, through which they can literally travel.
Craig Champlin, chairman of the speech and communi-cation disorders department, studies auditory perception and hopes to use the program to facilitate students’ under-standing of the human body.
“We really hope that this turns out to be something that turns into an extension of the actual classroom and laborato-ry,” Champlin said. “We hope we are able to expand our hori-zons in that regard. We will start modestly and see how it goes.”
From page 1
person is having their right to life taken away by the state of Tex-as, and that is clearly a violation of that person’s human rights,” said Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network.
According to the moratori-um proposal, the death penal-ty costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million for each execu-tion, and a further financial bur-den is placed in settling lawsuits filed by people who are wrong-fully accused and then exonerat-ed. The city and Travis County settled two wrongful conviction lawsuits in 2003 filed by Rich-ard Danziger and Christopher Ochoa, both accused of murder-ing Nancy DePriest in 2008, for a total of $14 million. Both men sat on death row for 12 years before being exonerated.
“Our technology for deter-mining guilt is so flawed that we have no right in assessing a pen-alty that can’t be rescinded lat-er,” said commission member Tom Davis. “It costs about three times as much to carry a penal-ty all the way through execution than it does to incarcerate some-one for life.”
Cobb said the Travis Coun-ty Commissioners Court passed a moratorium in 2003, but it has not been passed by the legisla-ture. He said the moratorium network has worked with the commission for a statewide mor-atorium during legislative ses-sions for the past 10 years.
There will be a march on the Capitol on Oct. 24 protesting the death penalty that will consist of exonerated people as well as mur-der victims’ family members who do not support the death penalty.
“I think the state that ends up not having the death penalty is also the state where the quality of life will improve,” Cobb said. “That is the goal of a just society — no death penalty and every-body living up to their potential.”
Food for thought
news for the last year would agree that we are in a financial crisis,” Knopf said. “So in that sense, I don’t think anything in that promise is being changed. We do sympathize with students who are worried about their fi-nancial security.”
The budget cuts will primar-ily affect seventh-year doctoral candidates.
“Historically the math depart-ment has been able to fund stu-dents through their seventh year, which is the maximum amount of support that the graduate school allows,” Knopf said. “But that was never guaranteed.”
The money saved from re-ducing the temporary instruc-tor budget will be used to hire new faculty within the College of Natural Sciences. All colleges within the University are under-going budget reallocations to at-tract new faculty and implement targeted merit pay increases.
“Every college has deficits,” said mathematics department Chairman Bill Beckner. “Rough-ly put, the College of Natural Sciences has certain deficits due to start-up costs for new facul-ty. Many of the experimentalists the college hires require labs to be built, and that adds addition-al expense.”
The college hired about 20 new faculty members at the be-ginning of the school year, and
five of them were teachers in the math department. Although the department hired about 25 per-cent of the new faculty, all five positions were replacements for teachers who retired, and the start-up costs were minimal, Beckner said.
Because of the budget cuts, the math department will probably be unable to fill the positions of two faculty members planning on retiring this year, which could cause class sizes to increase.
“But we do expect to be able to support our students for the rest of the school year,” Beckner said.
Although support may con-tinue, fifth-year doctoral candi-date Sean Bowman changed his degree plan from seven to six years when he found out about the budget cuts.
“There is a generalized anxiety among many of the mathemat-ics graduate students that comes when less money is being put into a growing program,” Bow-man said. “I changed my grad-uation plan because I’m worried that I won’t be able to find fund-ing for my seventh year.”
At the meeting, younger grad-uate students were assured that the department would find fund-ing for their financial support.
“I’m pretty optimistic,” said first-year doctoral candidate Sam Taylor. “They seemed to make it pretty clear that we probably don’t have anything to worry about.”
FUNDS: Budget cuts could reduce vital financial support
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Amber GenuskeSports Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Austin TalbertSenior Sports Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Anderson, Wes DeVoe, Blake Hurtik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Hurwitz, Laken Litman, Michael Sherfield, Chris TavarezComics Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carolyn CalabreseWeb Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Annika ErdmanAssociate Web Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Erik ReynaMultimedia Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan ElizondoAssociate Multimedia Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kara McKenzie, Rachel SchroederSenior Videographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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Issue StaffReporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lara Berendt, Vidushi Shrimali, Audrey White, Alex GeiserPhotographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bruno Morlan, Shelley Neuman, Michael Baldon, Erik Reyna, Anne-Marie Huff Life & Arts Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solomon Wang, Abby Johnston, Allistair Pinsoff, Layne Lynch, Gerald RichVideographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blas GarciaSports Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rishi DaulatCopy Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Megan Gottlieb, Claire Cardona, Vicky Ho, Amanda HicksWire Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dylan ClementComics Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rachel Weiss, Gage Alvarez, Jermaine Affonsa, Michael Cormier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Miles Luna, Name Nguyen, Katie Smith, Amelia Giller Designers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tarrah MillerWeb Technician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jordyn DavenportColumnists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua Avelar, Rebecca Counts
The Daily Texan (USPS 146-440), a student newspaper at The University of Texas at Austin, is published by Texas Student Media, 2500 Whitis Ave., Austin, TX 78705. The Daily Texan is published daily except Saturday, Sunday, federal holidays
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By Lara BerendtDaily Texan Staff
The Michael & Susan Dell Foun-dation committed $10 million to the creation of a Texas Student Data System which will give ed-ucators across the state timely ac-cess to students’ historical atten-dance, disciplinary and perfor-mance data.
The Texas Education Agency plans to use the grant to update its current system, the Public Educa-tion Information Management Sys-tem, by improving the collection and distribution of data for K-12 students and allowing more effi-
cient tracking of students as they move from one school or district to another, said agency spokeswom-an DeEtta Culbertson.
“This will give us a better snap-shot of the student, their achieve-ments and their records,” Culbert-son said.
The new system will use the wealth of data the agency already collects for financial and compli-ance reasons — such as ensuring enrollment fees are paid accu-rately and tracking dropout rates — and organize the system to make it more accessible to teach-ers, said Adam Jones, the agen-cy’s deputy commissioner of fi-nance and administration and chief operating officer.
“We’re data-rich in Texas and have been for a long time,” Jones
said. “The key here is that Texas needs to be more forward-thinking in putting actionable data out there to school districts, educators, par-ents and taxpayers.”
Jones said though universities throughout the state will have ac-cess to student academic records through the data system, admis-sion decisions will still be based on high school transcripts.
Increased data aggregation and reporting should not cause pub-lic concern over issues of privacy, Jones said. All TEA data collection processes adhere to the strict regu-lations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, he said.
“We’ve always been very cogni-zant of data security,” Jones said.
The new system will not be im-plemented right away, said agen-
cy spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe. She said the agency will launch a pilot program a year from now in a limited number of school districts followed by full system implemen-tation in all 1,031 districts within five or six years.
The cost to construct the entire system is projected to be $50 to $60 million, Ratcliffe said.
“The Dell grant is a great start for us, but we also plan to seek funding through the federal stim-ulus and stabilization funds that the president has made available, which we hope will pay for the rest of it,” Ratcliffe said.
More efficient, dashboard-style organization of student data relat-ing to standardized test scores, dis-ciplinary actions, other classes a stu-dent is enrolled in, siblings enrolled
at the same school and attendance will aid teachers in understand-ing why certain students are hav-ing difficulty in school, said Megan Matthews, spokeswoman for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
Matthews said other states have various ongoing data projects but none quite as extensive as the an-ticipated new Texas system. When the existing 104 different data col-lection systems are streamlined, the results will engage educators across the state to define what in-formation they need to best help students, she said.
“The innovation in what Tex-as will do is in providing a time-ly and historical snapshot of a stu-dent,” Matthews said. “This will really put Texas at the forefront of data-driven decision making.”
State receives grant to update data system DEATH: Austin commission supports ban
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Dell Foundation funds improvements to student records maintenance
Erik Reyna | Daily Texan Staff
Windsor Park Elementary Assistant Principal Audrey Eden reads a book while waiting for friends at Enoteca Vespaio. Eden traveled from Corpus Christi to attend an educational conference in Austin.
CENTER: Top conservators detail methods
VIRTUAL: UT hopes online land investment will pay off
The center conserves and preserves rather than restores — restoration involves recreat-ing an artifact to make it appear much like its former self. Pri-manis said she simply mends and reapplies what is there.
“We stabilize what is there for patrons more than fix-ing things to make them look good,” she said.
Mary Baughman, another book conservator at the center, said an important aspect of her job is to keep the history of the piece intact.
“If we make a drastic altera-tion to a book, that part of his-tory is lost,” she said.
As Baughman carefully lifts the discolored cover of a book from 1516, she gently tugs at a loose gathering of pages, the result of a break in the original threading. She plans to restitch the gathering back into the book, once again allowing it to be used for research purposes.
Baughman pulls out a small jar of a homemade, precipitat-ed wheat starch-based paste. “We are very particular about our paste,” she said while slid-ing a bookmark from a book on her shelf with the recipe on the back and the statement “Know your paste” on the front.
In the adjacent room, Steph-anie Watkins, head of paper conservation, stands over a tub of a slightly discolored solution of water and calcium hydrox-ide used to clean old papers. To Watkins’ right is the saturated poster she just pulled from the solution, drip-drying between two layers of non-woven poly-ester sheets laid on a Plexiglas board. The polyester enables her to lift the poster from the tub without the danger of tear-ing it.
“The solution pulls out the acidity that deteriorates the pa-per,” she said.
Down the hallway, head of photograph conservation Bar-bara Brown removes a long panoramic photograph of UT faculty taken before 1930 from its protective covering. She said when they received the picture, it was curled up and hardened to the point where stretching it would cause it to crumble. She said it was then placed in a hu-midifying chamber where the paper and emulsion absorbed enough moisture to loosen the photo’s fibers.
An intern was then able to mend the photograph using thin Japanese tissue paper and paste. Brown said the intern spent between 30 and 40 hours on the process.
The Nuremberg Chronicle, which awaits conservation, is one of at least three copies housed in the Harry Ransom Center. Once the flakes of col-or are readhered and minor flaws are corrected, this arti-fact of 15th century life will be sent to the Rubin Museum of Art next winter.
for his anatomy and physiolo-gy classes on Second Life are an attractive asset for UT stu-dents that could be brought to Austin through the virtu-al world. For two semesters, Zeigler will serve as UT’s first Virtual Visiting Scholar and a “guest lecturer” online.
“Anatomy can be kind of boring and dull and not fun, and when I first heard of Sec-ond Life, I thought of a mov-ie from my childhood called ‘Fantastic Voyage’, where this group of scientists are shrunk-en into microscopic size and enter the bloodstream of this diplomat to save his life,” Zei-gler said.
Jarmon said she is optimis-tic about the benefits UT stu-dents will gain from Zeigler’s models.
“Looking at a picture in a book is one thing, but being able to walk through the mod-
el is a whole different experi-ence,” she said.
A virtual specialist helped Zeigler develop massive vir-tual ear and larynx models large enough for an avatar to explore. The program will also feature a 15-layer iceberg to demonstrate human sound perception.
Students’ avatars are the size of ladybugs in proportion to the virtual ear, through which they can literally travel.
Craig Champlin, chairman of the speech and communi-cation disorders department, studies auditory perception and hopes to use the program to facilitate students’ under-standing of the human body.
“We really hope that this turns out to be something that turns into an extension of the actual classroom and laborato-ry,” Champlin said. “We hope we are able to expand our hori-zons in that regard. We will start modestly and see how it goes.”
From page 1
person is having their right to life taken away by the state of Tex-as, and that is clearly a violation of that person’s human rights,” said Scott Cobb, president of the Texas Moratorium Network.
According to the moratori-um proposal, the death penal-ty costs taxpayers an average of $2.3 million for each execu-tion, and a further financial bur-den is placed in settling lawsuits filed by people who are wrong-fully accused and then exonerat-ed. The city and Travis County settled two wrongful conviction lawsuits in 2003 filed by Rich-ard Danziger and Christopher Ochoa, both accused of murder-ing Nancy DePriest in 2008, for a total of $14 million. Both men sat on death row for 12 years before being exonerated.
“Our technology for deter-mining guilt is so flawed that we have no right in assessing a pen-alty that can’t be rescinded lat-er,” said commission member Tom Davis. “It costs about three times as much to carry a penal-ty all the way through execution than it does to incarcerate some-one for life.”
Cobb said the Travis Coun-ty Commissioners Court passed a moratorium in 2003, but it has not been passed by the legisla-ture. He said the moratorium network has worked with the commission for a statewide mor-atorium during legislative ses-sions for the past 10 years.
There will be a march on the Capitol on Oct. 24 protesting the death penalty that will consist of exonerated people as well as mur-der victims’ family members who do not support the death penalty.
“I think the state that ends up not having the death penalty is also the state where the quality of life will improve,” Cobb said. “That is the goal of a just society — no death penalty and every-body living up to their potential.”
Food for thought
news for the last year would agree that we are in a financial crisis,” Knopf said. “So in that sense, I don’t think anything in that promise is being changed. We do sympathize with students who are worried about their fi-nancial security.”
The budget cuts will primar-ily affect seventh-year doctoral candidates.
“Historically the math depart-ment has been able to fund stu-dents through their seventh year, which is the maximum amount of support that the graduate school allows,” Knopf said. “But that was never guaranteed.”
The money saved from re-ducing the temporary instruc-tor budget will be used to hire new faculty within the College of Natural Sciences. All colleges within the University are under-going budget reallocations to at-tract new faculty and implement targeted merit pay increases.
“Every college has deficits,” said mathematics department Chairman Bill Beckner. “Rough-ly put, the College of Natural Sciences has certain deficits due to start-up costs for new facul-ty. Many of the experimentalists the college hires require labs to be built, and that adds addition-al expense.”
The college hired about 20 new faculty members at the be-ginning of the school year, and
five of them were teachers in the math department. Although the department hired about 25 per-cent of the new faculty, all five positions were replacements for teachers who retired, and the start-up costs were minimal, Beckner said.
Because of the budget cuts, the math department will probably be unable to fill the positions of two faculty members planning on retiring this year, which could cause class sizes to increase.
“But we do expect to be able to support our students for the rest of the school year,” Beckner said.
Although support may con-tinue, fifth-year doctoral candi-date Sean Bowman changed his degree plan from seven to six years when he found out about the budget cuts.
“There is a generalized anxiety among many of the mathemat-ics graduate students that comes when less money is being put into a growing program,” Bow-man said. “I changed my grad-uation plan because I’m worried that I won’t be able to find fund-ing for my seventh year.”
At the meeting, younger grad-uate students were assured that the department would find fund-ing for their financial support.
“I’m pretty optimistic,” said first-year doctoral candidate Sam Taylor. “They seemed to make it pretty clear that we probably don’t have anything to worry about.”
FUNDS: Budget cuts could reduce vital financial support
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plus t/s
Vail Beaver Creek Keystone Arapahoe Basin20 Mountains. 5 Resorts. 1 Price.
breckenridge
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Sean BeherecAssociate News Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Pierre Bertrand, Austen Sofhauser, Blair WatlerSenior Reporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Viviana Aldous, Bobby Longoria, Rachel Platis, Lena PriceEnterprise Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew KreighbaumEnterprise Reporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hudson LockettCopy Desk Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert GreenAssociate Copy Desk Chiefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cristina Herrera, Nausheen Jivani, Matt JonesDesign Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thu VoAssistant Design Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Shatha HusseinSenior Designers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taylor Fausak, Lynda Gonzales, Olivia HintonPhoto Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . May-Ying LamAssociate Photo Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bryant Haertlein, Peter Franklin, Caleb MillerSenior Photographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Karina Jacques, Mary Kang,Tamir Kalifa, Peyton McGee, Sara YoungLife&Arts Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leigh PattersonAssociate Life&Arts Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brad Barry, Francisco Marin Jr.Senior Features Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Audrey Gale Campbell, Lisa HoLung, Ben Wermund Senior Entertainment Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Doty, Mary Lingwall, Robert RichSenior DT Weekend Writer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amber GenuskeSports Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Austin TalbertSenior Sports Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will Anderson, Wes DeVoe, Blake Hurtik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dan Hurwitz, Laken Litman, Michael Sherfield, Chris TavarezComics Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carolyn CalabreseWeb Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Annika ErdmanAssociate Web Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Erik ReynaMultimedia Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan ElizondoAssociate Multimedia Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kara McKenzie, Rachel SchroederSenior Videographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dane HurtEditorial Adviser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Finnell
Issue StaffReporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lara Berendt, Vidushi Shrimali, Audrey White, Alex GeiserPhotographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bruno Morlan, Shelley Neuman, Michael Baldon, Erik Reyna, Anne-Marie Huff Life & Arts Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Solomon Wang, Abby Johnston, Allistair Pinsoff, Layne Lynch, Gerald RichVideographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blas GarciaSports Writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Rishi DaulatCopy Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Megan Gottlieb, Claire Cardona, Vicky Ho, Amanda HicksWire Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dylan ClementComics Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rachel Weiss, Gage Alvarez, Jermaine Affonsa, Michael Cormier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Miles Luna, Name Nguyen, Katie Smith, Amelia Giller Designers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tarrah MillerWeb Technician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jordyn DavenportColumnists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua Avelar, Rebecca Counts
The Daily Texan (USPS 146-440), a student newspaper at The University of Texas at Austin, is published by Texas Student Media, 2500 Whitis Ave., Austin, TX 78705. The Daily Texan is published daily except Saturday, Sunday, federal holidays
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THE DAILY TEXAN
WORLD&NATIONWire Editor: Dylan Clementwww.dailytexanonline.com Tuesday, September 29, 2009
3
By Teresa CerojanoThe Associated Press
MANILA, Phil ippines — Rescuers pulled more bodies from swollen rivers Monday as residents started to dig their homes out from under layers of mud after flooding left 240 people dead in the Philippine capital and surrounding towns.
The National Disaster Co-ordinating Council said Tues-day the homes of nearly 1.9 million people in the capi-tal and surrounding areas were inundated, with nearly 380,000 people brought to schools, churches and other evacuation centers.
Overwhelmed officials called for international help, cautioning that they may not have sufficient resources to withstand another storm that forecasters said was brewing east of the island nation and could hit as early as Friday.
Authorities expected the death toll from Tropical Storm Ketsana, which scythed across the northern Philippines on Saturday, to rise as rescuers penetrate villag-es blocked off by floating cars and other debris. The storm dumped more than a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours, fueling the worst flooding to hit the country in more than 40 years.
Troops, police and volunteers have already rescued more than 12,359 people, but unconfirmed reports of more deaths abound, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.
He told a news conference that help from foreign governments will ensure that the Philippine government can continue its re-lief work.
“We are trying our level best to provide basic necessities, but the potential for a more serious
situation is there,” Teodoro told a news conference. “We cannot wait for that to happen.”
The extent of devastation became clearer Monday as TV networks broadcast imag-es of mud-covered communi-ties, cars upended on city streets
and reported huge numbers of villagers without drinking water, food and power.
In Manila’s suburban Mariki-na city, a sofa hung from electric wires.
Since the storm struck, the gov-ernment has declared a “state of
calamity” in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces, al-lowing officials to use emergency funds for relief and rescue.
The homes of nearly half a million people were inundat-ed. Some 115,000 of them were brought to about 200 schools,
churches and other evacuation shelters, officials said.
Resident Jeff Aquino said flood-waters rose to his home’s third floor at the height of the storm.
Aquino, his wife, three young children and two nephews spent that night on their roof without
food and water, mixing infant formula for his 2-year-old twins with the falling rain.
“We thought it was the end for us,” Aquino said.
Among those stranded by the floodwaters was young actress Christine Reyes, who was res-cued by movie and TV heartthrob Richard Gutierrez from the roof-top of her home near Manila after she made a frantic call for help to a local TV network with her mo-bile phone.
Gutierrez, a close friend and Reyes’ co-star in an upcoming movie, borrowed an army speed-boat and ferried Reyes, her moth-er and two young children to safety.
“I thought it was our ending but I did not lose hope,” Reyes said, thanking Gutierrez.
Rescuers pulled a mud-splat-tered body of a woman from the swollen Marikina river Monday. About eight hours later, police found three more bodies from the brownish waters.
President Gloria Macapa-gal Arroyo has said Ketsana and the flooding were “an extreme event” that “strained our response capabilities to the limit but ultimately did not break us.”
The United States has do-nated $100,000 and deployed a military helicopter and five rubber boats manned by about 20 American soldiers from the country’s south, where they have been providing counterterror-ism training. The United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Food Program have also provided food and other aid.
Activists, meanwhile, pointed to the deadly flooding as an ex-ample of the dangers of global warming a t U .N. c l imate negotiations in Bangkok.
Mike Alquinto | Associated Press
Soldiers load bags of relief goods into a military truck for distribution to flood victims on Monday at the armed forces headquarters in suburban Quezon City, north of Manila, Philippines.
By Rachel ZollThe Associated Press
NEW YORK — Organized religion was already in trou-ble before the fall of 2008. Denominations were stagnating or shrinking, and congregations across faith groups were fretting about their finances.
The Great Recession made things worse.
It has further drained the financial resources of many congregations, seminaries and religious day schools. Some congregations have disappeared and schools have been closed.
Religion has a long histo-ry of drawing hope out of suf-fering, but there’s little good news emerging from the reces-sion. Long after the economy im-proves, the changes made today will have a profound effect on how people practice their faith, where they turn for help in times of stress and how they pass their beliefs to their children.
“In 2010, I think we’re going to see 10 or 15 percent of con-gregations saying they’re in serious financial trouble,” says David Roozen, a lead research-er for the Faith Communities Today multi-faith survey, which measures congregational health annually. “With around 320,000 or 350,000 congregations, that’s a hell of a lot of them.”
The news isn’t uniformly bad. Communities in some areas are still moving ahead with plans for new congregations, schools and ministries, religious leaders say.
And many congregations say they found a renewed sense of purpose helping their suffering neighbors. Houses of
worship became centers of sup-port for the unemployed. At RockHarbor church in Costa Mesa, Calif., members responded so generously to word of a bud-get deficit that the church ended the fiscal year with a surplus.
“We’re all a little dumbfound-ed,” says Bryan Wilkins, the church business director. “We were hear-ing lots of stories about people being laid off, struggling finan-cially and losing homes. It’s tru-ly amazing.”
In the Great Depression, one of the bigger impacts was the loss of Jewish religious schools, which are key to continuing the faith from one generation to the next. Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University historian and author of “American Judaism,” says enrollment in Jewish schools plummeted in some ci t ies and many young Jews of that period didn’t have a chance to study their religion.
Today, some parents can no longer afford the thousands of dollars in tuition it costs to send a child to a religious day school. Church officials fear these parents won’t re-enroll their kids if family finances improve.
Enrollment in one group of 120 Jewish community day schools is down by about 7 percent this academic year, according to Marc Kramer, executive direc-tor of RAVSAK, a network of the schools. A few schools lost as many as 30 percent of their students. Many of the hun-dreds of other Jewish day schools, which are affiliated with Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements, are also in a financial crunch.
Rodrigo Abd | Associated Press
Soldiers and police officers stand guard outside Globo radio station after its closure in the capitol city Monday. The interim government’s measures permit authorities to temporarily close news media outlets.
By Mark StevensonThe Associated Press
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The coup-installed president of Honduras backed down Mon-day from an escalating standoff with protesters and suggested he would restore civil liberties and reopen dissident television and radio stations by the end of the week.
Riot police ringed supporters of ousted President Manuel Zela-ya who gathered for a large-scale protest march, setting off a day-long standoff. The government of interim President Roberto Mi-cheletti declared the march illegal, sent soldiers to silence dissident broadcasters, and suspended civ-il liberties for 45 days.
But in a sudden reversal, Micheletti said Monday after-noon that he wanted to “ask the Honduran people for forgive-ness” for the measures and said he would lift them in accordance with demands from the same Congress that installed him after a June 28 coup. He said he would discuss lifting the measures with court officials “as soon as possible,” adding: “By the end of this week we’ll have this resolved.”
He also repeated his pledge not to attack the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya has been holed up with 60 supporters since sneak-ing back into the country on Sept. 21. He even sent “a big hug” to Brazil’s president, a day after giving him a 10-day ultimatum to expel Zelaya or move him to Brazil.
His government also said it would welcome an advance team from the Organization of Amer ican S ta tes in to the country starting Friday, after expelling four members of a similar team Sunday, and said an OAS commission of foreign ministers could visit Oct. 7.
The increasingly authoritarian measures by the government had prompted international condem-nation, though the U.S. represen-tative to the OAS also had harsh words for Zelaya, calling his return to Honduras “irresponsible and foolish.”
The Micheletti government says Zelaya supporters are planning a violent insurrection.
“Some radio stations, some television stations, were calling for violence, for guerrilla war, and that had us in the government su-per worried,” Micheletti said.
So far, protests have seen
little bloodshed — the govern-ment says three people have been killed since the coup, while protesters put the number at 10. Protest leader Juan Barahona said that could change.
“This mass movement is peaceful, but to the extent they repress us, fence us in and make this method useless, we have to find some other form of strug-gle,” he said.
Micheletti made clear that even if the emergency measures are lift-ed, “that doesn’t mean the police are going back to barracks.”
M o n d a y ’ s m a r c h d r e w hundreds of people, many of whom covered their mouths with tape to protest government censorship. Protest leaders insisted that thousands more were trying to join but were stopped from leaving poorer neighbor-hoods or from traveling from the countryside.
“There is brutal repression against the people,” Zelaya told The Associated Press in a tele-phone interview Monday.
He later addressed the U.N. General Assembly by cellular phone, urging the world body to adopt a “firm position” against the “barbarism” of the govern-ment that deposed him.
T h e e m e r g e n c y d e c r e e issued Sunday bans unauthorized gatherings and lets police ar-rest people without warrants, rights guaranteed in the Hondu-ran Constitution. It also allows authorities to shut down news media for “statements that at-tack peace and the public order, or which offend the human dig-nity of public officials, or attack the law.”
In the late afternoon, police allowed the protesters to board buses and leave.
Government soldiers raided the offices of Radio Globo and the television station Channel 36, both critics of the Micheletti government, and silenced both. Afterward, the TV station broad-casted only a test pattern.
Radio Globo employees scram-bled out of an emergency exit to escape the raid that involved as many as 200 soldiers.
“They took away all the equip-ment,” said owner Alejandro Villatoro. “This is the death of the station.”
Two journalists covering the raid for Mexico’s Televisa and Guatemala’s Guatevision were beaten by security forces, who also took their camera, accord-ing to Guatemala’s ambassador to
the OAS, Jorge Skinner. He asked the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission to intervene.
U.S. State Department spokes-man P.J. Crowley condemned the expulsion.
“I think it’s time for the de facto regime to put down the shovel,” he said. “With every action they keep on making the hole deeper.”
Lew Amselem, the U.S . representative to the OAS, also condemned the expulsion as “deplorable and foolish.” But he had equally harsh words for Zelaya. He said returning with-out an agreement “serves neither the interests of the Honduran peo-ple nor those seeking the peaceful reestablishment of the democratic order in Honduras.”
Analysts called the shift a sign that the Micheletti government is feeling increasingly threatened.
“It certainly shows that they’re worried that Zelaya might be able to disrupt the government,” said Heather Berkman, a Honduras expert with the New York-based Eurasia Group. “Zelaya’s only recourse really is to mobilize people on the streets. I’m sure that Micheletti and the govern-ment know that and they’re go-ing to do whatever they can to prevent that.”
Storm sinks Philippine islands, 240 people dead
Interim president surrenders ground Religious associations come upon hard times
David Zentz | Associated Press
Members of the Rock Harbor Church worship in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Sunday.
3 W/N
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 OPINION4THE DAILY TEXAN
GALLERY
Editor in Chief: Jillian SheridanPhone: (512) 232-2212E-mail: [email protected] Editors: Jeremy Burchard David Muto Dan Treadway Lauren Winchester
VIEWPOINT
By Joshua AvelarDaily Texan Columnist
Budget cuts sink to a new low
LEGALESEOpinions expressed in The Daily Texan are
those of the editor, the editorial board or the writer of the article. They are not necessari-ly those of the UT administration, the Board of Regents or the Texas Student Media Board of Operating Trustees. All Texan editorials are writ-ten by the editorial board, which is listed in the top right corner of this page.
Have someting to say? Say it in print, and to the entire campus community. The Daily Texan Editorial Board welcomes submissions for guest columns. Columns must be between 500 and 700 words. Send columns to [email protected]. The Texan reserves the right to edit all columns for clarity and liabil-ity if chosen for publication.
SUBMIT A COLUMN
By Rebecca CountsDaily Texan Columnist
UTA should not ban smoking on campus
Aesthetics are important for ... students’
experiences, but not compared to
other aspects that the University has already singled out
amid the budget crisis.
UT’s fundraising faux pas
GALLERY
In the struggle with economic turmoil, colleges and universities across the country have dealt with painful budget cuts and amended agendas. UT is in no way exempt from this struggle, as President Wil-liam Powers announced unpopular budget cuts in his State of the University address earlier this month. The financial situation in which the University finds itself makes private donations a more important re-source than it has ever been. Yet, private donors are being tapped for endeavors not worthy of their mon-ey or attention.
There is a full-fledged effort by the University to change the entire look of the part of Speedway Street that stretches from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Dean Keeton Street. The plan would essential-ly cut off automobile traffic on the street and turn it into a giant walk-way, in addition to creating an ex-tensive landscaping change and lighting addition. The goal of the project is to make Speedway Street, along with the East Mall, as aesthet-ically pleasing and congregation-friendly as the West Mall.
However, such a plan is more of a luxury than a necessity, or per-haps even a hindrance. Automo-bile traffic on Speedway Street is a non-issue. There is no traffic enter-ing from Martin Luther King Bou-levard since that entrance is cut off right before the parking area for the Perry Casteñada Library for most of the day. The meters in front of Greg-ory Gym, though they allot very lit-tle parking time, are still regularly occupied. Only authorized vehicles coming from 21st Street are allowed to enter the area in front of Welch Hall, an area which is always occupied with parked faculty cars. There exists a pleasant balance of utili-ty for drivers and a small flow of traffic on Speedway Street that need not to be disturbed. It is the perfect uncrowded, yet much-needed street.
According to UT’s Web site, plans to renovate Speedway Street and the East Mall into a more pe-destrian-friendly area have been a priority for more than 10 years. However, 10 years ago nobody predict-ed the financial choke hold UT finds itself in today. Nobody envisioned the types of sacrifices that have been made. The situation the University faces now calls for a change in priorities.
Aesthetics are important for prospective students’ college decision process’ and current students’ expe-riences, but not compared to other aspects that the University has already singled out amid the budget crisis. According to reports by The Daily Texan, the McCombs School of Business announced last week a budget-induced 5 percent reduction in staff positions, eliminating as many as 15 important positions essen-tial to the daily grind of running the school. Several instructor positions will also be cut in the College of Liberal Arts.
The Cockrell School of Engineering has made cuts to its Informational Technology Group and Career As-sisting Center in light of budget constraints as well. In a field of study so dependent on modern technolo-gy, and with students needing guidance in facing the
shaky job market, it is sad to see these entities suffer.
Possibly the most important af-fect of the budget crisis is the de-cision for the University to end its scholarship program for Nation-al Merit Scholars. High-achiev-ing students from across the state, and even the country, will have one more thing to write on the nega-tive side of their “pros and cons” list when deciding upon enrolling at UT.
The University has insisted that these budget cuts are essential and are not ideal. The economic cri-sis seems to be bad enough to ef-fect important services to the stu-dent body and significant positions for the functionality of the schools. Yet, fundraising efforts have been directed toward more than $100 million just to make a part of cam-pus look nicer. The only thing es-
pecially aesthetically disturbing about the area is all the construction for the new Student Activities Cen-ter and Experimental Science Building, which, in time, will end and what little problem there is will be solved.
Big donors with deep pockets are a big reason why UT is the great institution that it is today. Relying on state funds and skyrocketing tuition rates alone would not suffice. What these donors do with their money is their personal business, but when it comes to what the University asks for, the general scholarship fund and functionality of the schools are far more impor-tant causes than new cobble stones on Speedway.
Avelar is a government senior
UT Arlington is the latest government entity ready to stop you from lighting up that cigarette. The university is considering banning smoking on campus.
A recent New York Times article reports that New York City and the state of Cal-ifornia are considering a smoking ban in all areas of city parks, ostensibly to protect people from secondhand smoke. But some supporters justify the ban because chil-dren shouldn’t have to see people lighting up. Los Angeles and Chica-go have already passed such a ban.
UT Arlington’s ban would be one of the most extensive nonsmoking bans in the country, ac-cording to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Smoking would be banned in all areas of campus, includ-ing previously designat-ed smoking areas. Even smoking in a privately-owned vehicle parked o n c a m p u s w o u l d be outlawed.
After banning smok-ing indoors and banish-ing outdoor smokers to designated smoking ar-eas, haven’t we done enough to discourage people from smoking?
According to the Houston Chronicle, UT Arlington claims that the goal of the ban is to promote a “healthy workplace.” But where are the studies linking smoking in the most well-ventilated place available — outside — to secondhand harm? And the Chronicle reports that the university plans to ban all tobacco use, not just smoking.
UT Arlington’s justification doesn’t hold
up. The university isn’t interested in pro-tecting its students and employees from secondhand smoke as much as preventing students and staff from smoking at all. UT Arlington wants to control the behavior of its students and staff.
Even those of us who want to breath smoke-free air can admit that a line should be drawn somewhere. Adult smokers should have the right to light up in plac-es where their actions don’t cause substan-tial and direct harm to others — like out-side on a university campus, where even
New York City’s flimsy justification of protect-ing children from see-ing someone smoke can’t hold water.
I like to breathe smoke-free air as much as anyone else. From being an asth-matic child, I have a spe-cial appreciation for the health concerns caused by being trapped in a room full of smoke. There is sense to banning smok-ing in University build-ings and requesting that Jester residents light up in the designated smok-ing areas rather than the whole courtyard.
But stopping an adult from doing something that directly harms no
one but the actor in the name of “a healthy workplace” is a new low and a dangerous precedent. State and local governments should give up their crusade to prevent adults from hurting themselves.
Educational establishments like UT Ar-lington should focus on teaching students to make their own choices rather than dic-tating those choices.
Counts is a plan II honors, business honors and history senior
But stopping an adult from doing something that directly harms no one but the
actor in the name of a “healthy workplace” is ... a dangerous
precedent.
Specifics detailing UT’s approach to trimming fat during the current budget squeeze are emerging nearly every week.
Following recent news that the College of Liberal Arts will be taking steps to cut graduate admissions in accordance with President William Powers’ initiative to prioritize recruitment of top faculty and graduate students, the College of Nat-ural Science’s Department of Mathematics is the latest to hint at a restructuring of graduate study. As with many of the budget details that have surfaced this fall, some of the news is potentially concerning for certain sectors of students.
The Daily Texan reported today that the math department may move to pull teaching positions and scholarships from seventh-year Ph.D. students if further cuts — stemming from a 10-percent decrease in departmental funding — are called for.
The math department has in the past contractually guaranteed five to six years of financial assistance to doctoral students, and while seventh-year students are not promised aid, funding has allowed the department to assure them assistance. A policy in place, though, exempts the University from fulfilling such contracts when the state is undergoing a budget crisis — and depending on budget out-looks, seventh-year students will take those hits.
These seventh-year students are not what many would deem “average” col-lege students: They are older, likely with greater financial burdens and, perhaps, with families of their own. Revoking their financial assistance will significantly handicap their efforts to complete a lengthy academic endeavor — the very sort of education the University should be lauding and touting in its attempts to re-cruit top graduate students.
Admittedly, those affected will be few, but the proposition is disconcerting. During his State of the University address on Sept. 17, Powers asserted that, in a time of financial unease, the University “can try simply to balance the budget and tread water, or we can make the necessary hard choices and move ahead.”
In this instance, the Department of Mathematics must consider whether this step, meant to move the department “ahead” is actually a step backward.
While the University is entitled to reprioritize graduate departments as it sees fit, departmental administration should weigh the human effects of restructuring before tacking too closely to a vague phrase — “move ahead” — that encourag-es brash decision-making.
With the budget essentially flat, perhaps treading water is, in some cases, temporarily acceptable.
— David Muto for the editorial board
Please recycle this copy of The Daily Tex-an. Place it in a friendly recycling bin or back in the burnt-orange stand where you found it.
SUBMIT A FIRING LINEPlease e-mail your Firing Lines to firin-
[email protected]. The Daily Tex-an reserves the right to edit all letters for brevity, clarity and liability.
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Tuesday, September 29, 2009 OPINION4THE DAILY TEXAN
GALLERY
Editor in Chief: Jillian SheridanPhone: (512) 232-2212E-mail: [email protected] Editors: Jeremy Burchard David Muto Dan Treadway Lauren Winchester
VIEWPOINT
By Joshua AvelarDaily Texan Columnist
Budget cuts sink to a new low
LEGALESEOpinions expressed in The Daily Texan are
those of the editor, the editorial board or the writer of the article. They are not necessari-ly those of the UT administration, the Board of Regents or the Texas Student Media Board of Operating Trustees. All Texan editorials are writ-ten by the editorial board, which is listed in the top right corner of this page.
Have someting to say? Say it in print, and to the entire campus community. The Daily Texan Editorial Board welcomes submissions for guest columns. Columns must be between 500 and 700 words. Send columns to [email protected]. The Texan reserves the right to edit all columns for clarity and liabil-ity if chosen for publication.
SUBMIT A COLUMN
By Rebecca CountsDaily Texan Columnist
UTA should not ban smoking on campus
Aesthetics are important for ... students’
experiences, but not compared to
other aspects that the University has already singled out
amid the budget crisis.
UT’s fundraising faux pas
GALLERY
In the struggle with economic turmoil, colleges and universities across the country have dealt with painful budget cuts and amended agendas. UT is in no way exempt from this struggle, as President Wil-liam Powers announced unpopular budget cuts in his State of the University address earlier this month. The financial situation in which the University finds itself makes private donations a more important re-source than it has ever been. Yet, private donors are being tapped for endeavors not worthy of their mon-ey or attention.
There is a full-fledged effort by the University to change the entire look of the part of Speedway Street that stretches from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Dean Keeton Street. The plan would essential-ly cut off automobile traffic on the street and turn it into a giant walk-way, in addition to creating an ex-tensive landscaping change and lighting addition. The goal of the project is to make Speedway Street, along with the East Mall, as aesthet-ically pleasing and congregation-friendly as the West Mall.
However, such a plan is more of a luxury than a necessity, or per-haps even a hindrance. Automo-bile traffic on Speedway Street is a non-issue. There is no traffic enter-ing from Martin Luther King Bou-levard since that entrance is cut off right before the parking area for the Perry Casteñada Library for most of the day. The meters in front of Greg-ory Gym, though they allot very lit-tle parking time, are still regularly occupied. Only authorized vehicles coming from 21st Street are allowed to enter the area in front of Welch Hall, an area which is always occupied with parked faculty cars. There exists a pleasant balance of utili-ty for drivers and a small flow of traffic on Speedway Street that need not to be disturbed. It is the perfect uncrowded, yet much-needed street.
According to UT’s Web site, plans to renovate Speedway Street and the East Mall into a more pe-destrian-friendly area have been a priority for more than 10 years. However, 10 years ago nobody predict-ed the financial choke hold UT finds itself in today. Nobody envisioned the types of sacrifices that have been made. The situation the University faces now calls for a change in priorities.
Aesthetics are important for prospective students’ college decision process’ and current students’ expe-riences, but not compared to other aspects that the University has already singled out amid the budget crisis. According to reports by The Daily Texan, the McCombs School of Business announced last week a budget-induced 5 percent reduction in staff positions, eliminating as many as 15 important positions essen-tial to the daily grind of running the school. Several instructor positions will also be cut in the College of Liberal Arts.
The Cockrell School of Engineering has made cuts to its Informational Technology Group and Career As-sisting Center in light of budget constraints as well. In a field of study so dependent on modern technolo-gy, and with students needing guidance in facing the
shaky job market, it is sad to see these entities suffer.
Possibly the most important af-fect of the budget crisis is the de-cision for the University to end its scholarship program for Nation-al Merit Scholars. High-achiev-ing students from across the state, and even the country, will have one more thing to write on the nega-tive side of their “pros and cons” list when deciding upon enrolling at UT.
The University has insisted that these budget cuts are essential and are not ideal. The economic cri-sis seems to be bad enough to ef-fect important services to the stu-dent body and significant positions for the functionality of the schools. Yet, fundraising efforts have been directed toward more than $100 million just to make a part of cam-pus look nicer. The only thing es-
pecially aesthetically disturbing about the area is all the construction for the new Student Activities Cen-ter and Experimental Science Building, which, in time, will end and what little problem there is will be solved.
Big donors with deep pockets are a big reason why UT is the great institution that it is today. Relying on state funds and skyrocketing tuition rates alone would not suffice. What these donors do with their money is their personal business, but when it comes to what the University asks for, the general scholarship fund and functionality of the schools are far more impor-tant causes than new cobble stones on Speedway.
Avelar is a government senior
UT Arlington is the latest government entity ready to stop you from lighting up that cigarette. The university is considering banning smoking on campus.
A recent New York Times article reports that New York City and the state of Cal-ifornia are considering a smoking ban in all areas of city parks, ostensibly to protect people from secondhand smoke. But some supporters justify the ban because chil-dren shouldn’t have to see people lighting up. Los Angeles and Chica-go have already passed such a ban.
UT Arlington’s ban would be one of the most extensive nonsmoking bans in the country, ac-cording to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Smoking would be banned in all areas of campus, includ-ing previously designat-ed smoking areas. Even smoking in a privately-owned vehicle parked o n c a m p u s w o u l d be outlawed.
After banning smok-ing indoors and banish-ing outdoor smokers to designated smoking ar-eas, haven’t we done enough to discourage people from smoking?
According to the Houston Chronicle, UT Arlington claims that the goal of the ban is to promote a “healthy workplace.” But where are the studies linking smoking in the most well-ventilated place available — outside — to secondhand harm? And the Chronicle reports that the university plans to ban all tobacco use, not just smoking.
UT Arlington’s justification doesn’t hold
up. The university isn’t interested in pro-tecting its students and employees from secondhand smoke as much as preventing students and staff from smoking at all. UT Arlington wants to control the behavior of its students and staff.
Even those of us who want to breath smoke-free air can admit that a line should be drawn somewhere. Adult smokers should have the right to light up in plac-es where their actions don’t cause substan-tial and direct harm to others — like out-side on a university campus, where even
New York City’s flimsy justification of protect-ing children from see-ing someone smoke can’t hold water.
I like to breathe smoke-free air as much as anyone else. From being an asth-matic child, I have a spe-cial appreciation for the health concerns caused by being trapped in a room full of smoke. There is sense to banning smok-ing in University build-ings and requesting that Jester residents light up in the designated smok-ing areas rather than the whole courtyard.
But stopping an adult from doing something that directly harms no
one but the actor in the name of “a healthy workplace” is a new low and a dangerous precedent. State and local governments should give up their crusade to prevent adults from hurting themselves.
Educational establishments like UT Ar-lington should focus on teaching students to make their own choices rather than dic-tating those choices.
Counts is a plan II honors, business honors and history senior
But stopping an adult from doing something that directly harms no one but the
actor in the name of a “healthy workplace” is ... a dangerous
precedent.
Specifics detailing UT’s approach to trimming fat during the current budget squeeze are emerging nearly every week.
Following recent news that the College of Liberal Arts will be taking steps to cut graduate admissions in accordance with President William Powers’ initiative to prioritize recruitment of top faculty and graduate students, the College of Nat-ural Science’s Department of Mathematics is the latest to hint at a restructuring of graduate study. As with many of the budget details that have surfaced this fall, some of the news is potentially concerning for certain sectors of students.
The Daily Texan reported today that the math department may move to pull teaching positions and scholarships from seventh-year Ph.D. students if further cuts — stemming from a 10-percent decrease in departmental funding — are called for.
The math department has in the past contractually guaranteed five to six years of financial assistance to doctoral students, and while seventh-year students are not promised aid, funding has allowed the department to assure them assistance. A policy in place, though, exempts the University from fulfilling such contracts when the state is undergoing a budget crisis — and depending on budget out-looks, seventh-year students will take those hits.
These seventh-year students are not what many would deem “average” col-lege students: They are older, likely with greater financial burdens and, perhaps, with families of their own. Revoking their financial assistance will significantly handicap their efforts to complete a lengthy academic endeavor — the very sort of education the University should be lauding and touting in its attempts to re-cruit top graduate students.
Admittedly, those affected will be few, but the proposition is disconcerting. During his State of the University address on Sept. 17, Powers asserted that, in a time of financial unease, the University “can try simply to balance the budget and tread water, or we can make the necessary hard choices and move ahead.”
In this instance, the Department of Mathematics must consider whether this step, meant to move the department “ahead” is actually a step backward.
While the University is entitled to reprioritize graduate departments as it sees fit, departmental administration should weigh the human effects of restructuring before tacking too closely to a vague phrase — “move ahead” — that encourag-es brash decision-making.
With the budget essentially flat, perhaps treading water is, in some cases, temporarily acceptable.
— David Muto for the editorial board
Please recycle this copy of The Daily Tex-an. Place it in a friendly recycling bin or back in the burnt-orange stand where you found it.
SUBMIT A FIRING LINEPlease e-mail your Firing Lines to firin-
[email protected]. The Daily Tex-an reserves the right to edit all letters for brevity, clarity and liability.
RECYCLE!
UNIVERSITYTuesday, September 29, 2009 5
Summit highlights sustainability
Nine-week courseaids UT studentswith stress relief
Ethnic studies wrestles conformity
By Alex GeiserDaily Texan Staff
Members of the Campus Envi-ronmental Center are urging UT students to turn out at the Earth Summit today and provide their input for the new campus sustain-ability plan.
The Climate Action Plan, which will be the first of its kind at UT, will comprise ways to make the campus more energy efficient. The plan is a write-up on how to reduce emissions based on the Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which identified the University oper-ations responsible for the most emissions on campus.
The center is a Student Govern-ment agency working for a more sustainable system at the Univer-sity. The organization works on
projects and campaigns to educate the UT community in an effort to bring about positive environmen-tal change.
The Earth Summit will follow the environmental center’s third annual Trash to Treasure cloth-
ing sale, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the patio of the Flawn Academic Center, and each article of clothing will be priced at $1. The clothing sold is
left over from the Trash to Trea-sure sale the group held before the start of the fall semester. The remainder of the clothes after to-day’s event will be donated to Austin State Hospital.
Karen Blaney, adviser to the en-
vironmental center, said the cloth-ing sale is an effort to bring pub-licity to the organization’s efforts.
“It’s their first major event of the year to get students together
to follow up on UT’s sustainabili-ty,” she said. “It’s good to put on a sale right on campus when classes are occurring.”
The Earth Summit will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in GRG 102 concerning UT’s potential Climate Action Plan.
Jim Walker, UT’s director of sus-tainability, will discuss the plan and offer ways for the UT commu-nity to get involved. Students for a Sustainable Campus will lead the discussion and facilitate audience interaction.
Drucilla Tigner, government and communications studies se-nior and co-director of the CEC, said the audience is encouraged to speak up and voice their opinions, as their input will be used to help shape the plan.
“We do this to see where the stu-dent body stands, educate them and get new innovative ideas from people about how we can re-duce emissions,” Tigner said.
By Vidushi ShrimaliDaily Texan Staff
Ethnic studies is a relatively new discipline in U.S. universi-ties, but as the field expands, some programs are facing increasing ac-ademic challenges.
The subject was the topic of discussion at a roundtable Mon-day, which commemorated the 41st anniversary of San Francis-co State University‘s 1968 strikes. The protests were staged by stu-dents demanding better repre-sentation of African-Americans, Asian-Americans and other mi-norities on campus.
For months, the nation was caught in a racial limbo as they watched police officers beat stu-dents and faculty who were pro-testing for better representation. College campuses across the na-tion mimicked the strikes in the 1960s and 1970s, and 40 years lat-er, it led to the establishment of ethnic studies programs and cen-ters across the United States. UT formed centers for African and Af-rican American, Asian American and Mexican American studies, in 1969, 1970 and 2000 respectively, in response to the national strikes.
“The strike started ethnic discus-sions at colleges across the nation; it created a sea of change in the American academy,” said Lok Siu, discussion moderator and UT asso-ciate professor of anthropology.
Gordon Chang, who is one of the founding members of the Asian American Studies Program at Stan-ford University, traced the history of Asian American studies.
While acknowledging the wide steps ethnic studies have made in the past four decades, Chang warned of a weakness that has resulted from what he called the institutionalization of ethnic studies.
“We are victims of our suc-cess, now part of the power struc-ture that students railed against 40 years ago,” Chang said. “Faculty are under enormous pressure to conform to established criteria.”
Madeline Hsu, UT associate professor and director for the Cen-ter for Asian American Studies, said she hopes the center will gain
a larger profile on campus. “We don’t think much of Asians
in the South, but in places in Texas, there is part of the Asian American study we can explore,” Hsu said. “I want to build a program institu-tionally different from others.”
Domino Perez, acting director for the Center for Mexican Amer-ican Studies, emphasized the need to meet students’ expectations of ethnic studies programs.
“Ethnic studies was born in this great time of struggle and strife, but I find today, for students, we need to ask ourselves, ‘How is it relevant for them?’” Perez said.
Associate anthropology profes-sor Shannon Speed spoke of her concerns regarding the misrepre-sentation of Native Americans on campus. Making up about 1 per-cent of the entire student popula-tion, Speed said Native Americans are incorrectly counted as Latino simply because they came to the United States from Mexico.
Speed hopes to have a program and center for Native American studies in the future, hoping “the University will see the need to do the important and necessary out-reach it has done for other stu-dents” for Native Americans.
Karina Jacques | Daily Texan Staff
Gordon Chang, a professor at Stanford University, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Asian-American Studies on Monday.
By Lara BerendtDaily Texan Staff
UT students met in the Coun-seling and Mental Health Center on Monday afternoon to enroll in “Optimizing Your Potential,” a nine-week class aimed at helping students combat stress through meditation.
Staff psychologist Mary Vance and Cary Tucker, Integrated Health Program director, have taught the course for six years and anticipate an enrollment of about 20 students this semes-ter. The instructors met with stu-dents on an individual basis to determine whether the class was a good fit for them.
Students in the course will learn the technique of mind-fulness, or paying close atten-tion to experiences in the pres-ent moment without judging them, Tucker said. She said that stress is often caused by wanting things to be different and that be-ing more present in everyday ac-tivities allows students to have a different relationship with what’s happening in their lives.
Instruction in meditation, both while seated and lying down, and the practice of yoga are formal techniques to assist students in be-ing present in day-to-day life.
Vance said stress reduction
techniques are crucial in a soci-ety of multitaskers, and trying to juggle too many things is a reci-pe for stress.
“As we can become simpler and our focus becomes involved with fewer things, all of the busi-ness in our mind begins to quiet down,” Vance said.
Students who have taken the course in past years have given the instructors very positive feedback, Tucker said. Those who enroll in the class are often depressed and highly self-critical, but the tech-niques they learn help them to shift their patterns of thinking, feel more compassion toward them-selves and treat themselves more gently, Tucker said.
The course also features a half-day silent retreat and the use of alternate communication skills such as humor and free-flowing writing as additional approach-es to reducing stress, Vance said. Former students were so satisfied with the results of the medita-tion techniques that they asked to form an outside meditation group as an offshoot of the course.
“Students, even a year later, have said it’s continuing to help because it’s a different way of be-ing in your life,” Tucker said.
For more information about the class, visit www.cmhc.utexas.edu/.
Anne-Marie Huff | Daily Texan Staff
Civil engineering sophomore Estella Cota packs clothes for the Campus Environmental Center’s Trash to Treasure sale which will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the patio of the Flawn Academic Center. It is the first major event of the year for the environmental center.
‘‘We do this to see where the student body stands, educate them and get new innovative ideas from
people about how we can reduce emissions.”
— Drucilla Tigner, Campus Environmental Center co-director
Environmental centerseeks student opinionon Climate Action Plan
Pipes and music
Michael Baldon | Daily Texan Staff
Joshua Torres plays a friend’s travel guitar in the window of Pipes Plus on Guadalupe Street. Joshua is a local Austinite and glass blower in the shop above the hookah bar.
5 UNIV
STATE&LOCAL Tuesday, September 29, 20096
discounted Texas menu items
Texas menu items and a variety of Texas wines
fixed-price Texas meals
special Texas menu items
fixed-price Texas meals
discounted Texas menu items
fixed-price Texas meals
Source: www.gotexan.org/restaurantroundup
Participating restaurants EAT: Texas fare supports food banksalso helps restaurants and patrons give back to their communities.
“By participating in the GO TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up, you not only have the opportu-nity to demonstrate Texan pride, but you get to be a good neigh-bor. That’s what being a Texan is all about,” said Kelly Camu-nez, community events manag-er at Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. “Many of the participat-ing restaurants are contributing a
portion of the proceeds to their lo-cal food bank, and food banks in this current economy are playing a bigger role.”
Camunez said she is optimis-tic about the fundraising op-portunities the round-up pres-ents. Last year, the organization raised $1,000 through the event. However, because Farm Credit Bank of Texas is serving as a pre-senting sponsor and more res-taurants are involved, it expects this year’s event to provide even greater resources, which Camu-
nez said is especially necessary this fall.
“We’re seeing an increased need for food assistance, so now it is more important than ever that our community support events that help nourish our hungry neighbors,” Camunez said in an e-mail. “And when you support the food banks through sharing a meal at one of the GO TEXAN participating restaurants, you’re also reminded of those who may not have a meal to share.”
With four days left in the GO
TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up, there are several opportunities for hungry Austinites to support lo-cal restaurants and food banks, whether by simply eating at one of the participating restaurants or attending the Chef Showdown on Wednesday.
“We’re excited that we sup-port Texas farms and ranchers, we support the local economy by dining in local restaurants and we support local food banks,” Staples said. “It’s a triple win for anyone [who] participates.”
From page 1
6 S/L
WE ACCEPT BEVO BUCKS & MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
No appointment necessary. Not valid with any other o� er. Valid only at Austin Pro-Cuts (c). Expires 09/21/09
Regular $12.95
THANKS UT - for your patronage.To better serve you, and reduce your wait
time, we have added another stylist. Come in and meet Patricia.
FREE BODY WAXING
Brazilian Waxing for only $35
WOMEN:FREE Bikini Line, Eye Brow or Under Arm
MEN:FREE Eye Brow, Ear or Nose(First Time TX Guests)
The Triangle4700 W.Guadalupe St. Ste.10
512.961.5763
N Lamar Blvd
W 47th St
Tria
ngle
Ave
W G
uad
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St
Text: To:
For SpecialOffers!
Please present coupons with incoming or-ders. Coupons not valid with other offers or 3 Pant Specials. Only one coupon per visit.
Open Monday - Friday 7am - 7pmSaturday 9am - 3pm
Please present coupons with incoming or-ders. Coupons not valid with other offers or 3 Pant Specials. Only one coupon per visit.
338-0141236-1118
472-5710
$3OFF 1/2OFF
www.supercuts.com www.supercuts.com
LUNCH BUFFET!
We Accept Bevo Bucks320-8030
Large 1-topping pizza with a 2 Liter Pepsi for only $11.99
Back to SchoolSPECIAL
1 Medium 1 toppingAND
2 piece Lava Crunch Cake $7.99
Text 512dominos to 65586 andreceive free pizza and more when
you join our SMS club.
order online at: www.dominos.com
512-477-0101
Deep Dish extra.Limited time offer.
Delivery charge may apply.
discount code BTS5
Grill & BarGrill & Bar
Monday-Friday 3:00-6:00
www.romeosrestaurant.comwww.romeosrestaurants.com
All Products and Services!Just show your UT ID at checkout. Loyalty Code: UTSNC
10% O�Exit 243 Braker, Take Turnaround
1 Mile South on Frontage
15,000 Sq. ft. of Products!
W A C K Y W E D N E S D A Y S
1 Large 1 Topping
$599$599
$499$499
$1499$1499
1 Medium 1 Topping PIZZA/WINGS MEAL DEAL
1 Large Cheese & any 1 Topping
10 Howie Wings
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Phone #512-323-9393
STATE&LOCAL Tuesday, September 29, 20096
discounted Texas menu items
Texas menu items and a variety of Texas wines
fixed-price Texas meals
special Texas menu items
fixed-price Texas meals
discounted Texas menu items
fixed-price Texas meals
Source: www.gotexan.org/restaurantroundup
Participating restaurants EAT: Texas fare supports food banksalso helps restaurants and patrons give back to their communities.
“By participating in the GO TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up, you not only have the opportu-nity to demonstrate Texan pride, but you get to be a good neigh-bor. That’s what being a Texan is all about,” said Kelly Camu-nez, community events manag-er at Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. “Many of the participat-ing restaurants are contributing a
portion of the proceeds to their lo-cal food bank, and food banks in this current economy are playing a bigger role.”
Camunez said she is optimis-tic about the fundraising op-portunities the round-up pres-ents. Last year, the organization raised $1,000 through the event. However, because Farm Credit Bank of Texas is serving as a pre-senting sponsor and more res-taurants are involved, it expects this year’s event to provide even greater resources, which Camu-
nez said is especially necessary this fall.
“We’re seeing an increased need for food assistance, so now it is more important than ever that our community support events that help nourish our hungry neighbors,” Camunez said in an e-mail. “And when you support the food banks through sharing a meal at one of the GO TEXAN participating restaurants, you’re also reminded of those who may not have a meal to share.”
With four days left in the GO
TEXAN Restaurant Round-Up, there are several opportunities for hungry Austinites to support lo-cal restaurants and food banks, whether by simply eating at one of the participating restaurants or attending the Chef Showdown on Wednesday.
“We’re excited that we sup-port Texas farms and ranchers, we support the local economy by dining in local restaurants and we support local food banks,” Staples said. “It’s a triple win for anyone [who] participates.”
From page 1
6 S/L
WE ACCEPT BEVO BUCKS & MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
No appointment necessary. Not valid with any other o� er. Valid only at Austin Pro-Cuts (c). Expires 09/21/09
Regular $12.95
THANKS UT - for your patronage.To better serve you, and reduce your wait
time, we have added another stylist. Come in and meet Patricia.
FREE BODY WAXING
Brazilian Waxing for only $35
WOMEN:FREE Bikini Line, Eye Brow or Under Arm
MEN:FREE Eye Brow, Ear or Nose(First Time TX Guests)
The Triangle4700 W.Guadalupe St. Ste.10
512.961.5763
N Lamar Blvd
W 47th St
Tria
ngle
Ave
W G
uad
alupe
St
Text: To:
For SpecialOffers!
Please present coupons with incoming or-ders. Coupons not valid with other offers or 3 Pant Specials. Only one coupon per visit.
Open Monday - Friday 7am - 7pmSaturday 9am - 3pm
Please present coupons with incoming or-ders. Coupons not valid with other offers or 3 Pant Specials. Only one coupon per visit.
338-0141236-1118
472-5710
$3OFF 1/2OFF
www.supercuts.com www.supercuts.com
LUNCH BUFFET!
We Accept Bevo Bucks320-8030
Large 1-topping pizza with a 2 Liter Pepsi for only $11.99
Back to SchoolSPECIAL
1 Medium 1 toppingAND
2 piece Lava Crunch Cake $7.99
Text 512dominos to 65586 andreceive free pizza and more when
you join our SMS club.
order online at: www.dominos.com
512-477-0101
Deep Dish extra.Limited time offer.
Delivery charge may apply.
discount code BTS5
Grill & BarGrill & Bar
Monday-Friday 3:00-6:00
www.romeosrestaurant.comwww.romeosrestaurants.com
All Products and Services!Just show your UT ID at checkout. Loyalty Code: UTSNC
10% O�Exit 243 Braker, Take Turnaround
1 Mile South on Frontage
15,000 Sq. ft. of Products!
W A C K Y W E D N E S D A Y S
1 Large 1 Topping
$599$599
$499$499
$1499$1499
1 Medium 1 Topping PIZZA/WINGS MEAL DEAL
1 Large Cheese & any 1 Topping
10 Howie Wings
Limited Time Offer
Phone #512-323-9393
Sports Editor: Austin TalbertE-mail: [email protected]: (512) 232-2210www.dailytexanonline.com SPORTS
THE DAILY TEXAN
By Michael SherfieldDaily Texan Staff
For the first time all season, a running back stood atop the Tex-as depth chart with no asterisks and no “or” beside his name. Tre’ Newton, on coming off two big performances against Wy-oming and Texas Tech, was the long-awaited committee of one.
Then Saturday rolled around.With two huge runs that com-
bined for more than 80 yards and a touchdown, Vondrell Mc-Gee, the original starter when the
season opened a month ago, re-inserted himself in the conversa-tion. He finished with 104 yards on eight carries, Texas’ first 100-yard rusher all season.
He was joined with impres-sive performances from Cody Johnson, whose only carry went for an 18-yard touchdown, and Fozzy Whittaker. The prom-ising sophomore took his first carry of the season for a touch-down, only to see it nullified by a holding penalty. He respond-ed with four carries for 38 yards
and a score.Jeremy Hills also ran for 68
yards on three carries in the fourth quarter, but fumbled twice, on the same play.
“It’s a good problem to have,” said offensive coordi-nator Greg Davis. “I’m encour-aged by how we ran the ball in the second half.”
After a poor start from New-ton in the first half, the Texas sta-ble of runners galloped for 244 yards in the second half, en route to 303 rushing yards.
“It’s hard. Everyone that gets a chance to get in there does their thing,” McGee said of the competition.
The Longhorns have been looking for a feature runner for more than a year, a battle that went on through training camp, where McGee was named the starter. But after being slowed by an ankle injury for two weeks, he saw his carries cut sharply as Newton shined.
By Will AndersonDaily Texan Staff
An MRI revealed Sunday that Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin suffered an isolated tear in his right ACL in the Bears’ 68-13 win over Northwestern State last week. He will miss the rest of the season.
“What we’ll do is move forward as a team,” said Baylor head coach Art Briles Monday. “Our image may change a little bit, but the de-termination won’t.”
Griffin went down on the first drive of the game when he was tackled, and his knee bent awk-wardly under his body on a no-gain, fourth-down play. North-western State got the ball and drove for a touchdown, during which time Griffin was having his knee taped on the sideline. Griffin returned for Baylor and played the rest of the first half before leaving at the break.
After the game, Briles said he was concerned about his quarter-back but that he was encouraged by Griffin finishing out the half.
Griffin, who was also at the post-game press conference, said he wasn’t concerned. “I played on it, so I should be able to play on it again,” Griffin said.
Griffin finished Saturday with 226 yards passing and three touch-downs. He was replaced by back-up Blake Szymanski, who also in-jured his throwing shoulder when he was tackled in the second half. Szymanski is listed as day-to-day.
If he cannot play this week versus Kent State, Briles said true fresh-man Nick Florence would start.
“We really are not sure wheth-er he’s going to be able to play or not this weekend,” Briles said of Szymanski.
The Bears also lost senior defen-sive back Mikail Baker for the sea-son to a knee injury. An MRI re-vealed an ACL tear and tears to his medial and lateral meniscus after he went down on Saturday.
Running Up ShortDespite losing 29-28 to No. 12
Houston, there was one bright spot for Texas Tech Saturday night: the running game, as three backs com-bined for 191 yards and effective-ly tripled the Red Raiders’ rushing total for the year. Coming into the contest, Tech was averaging 28.7 yards rushing per game.
“There’s always the run in the gameplan, and then the defense is going to decide to give you one thing or the other, and then I thought Baron [Batch] ran the ball really well,” said Tech coach Mike Leach. “I thought our line played well.”
Tech also scored four rushing touchdowns in the game after putting in only three in the first three weeks.
In another trip-up for the Red Raiders, offensive lineman and preseason All-American
By Rishi DaulatDaily Texan Staff
English Premier LeagueManchester United can thank
Wigan Athletic for the Red Devils’ return to a familiar spot on the Pre-miere League table: first place. In one of the biggest shocks of the sea-son thus far, Wigan upset a seem-ingly invincible and previously un-beaten Chelsea squad, 3-1.
Wigan struck first on Titus Bram-ble’s wide-open header in the 16th minute. Ivory Coast internation-al Didier Drogba leveled the game when with his 100th career goal for the Blues. Later, in the 53rd, Chel-sea goalkeeper Petr Cech tripped up Wigan striker Hugo Rodalle-
ga in the penalty box, leading to a Wigan penalty kick and a red card for Cech. Rodallega easily convert-ed the penalty past the new Blues’ keeper, Henrique Hilario, to put the home side up 2-1.
Last week, Chelsea looked as if they were headed toward a draw against Stoke City until Malouda put in a stoppage time winner, yet there would be no last-minute mag-ic for Chelsea in this match as Paul Scharner added a late goal to ce-ment the victory for Wigan Athletic.
Chelsea’s loss, coupled with United’s 2-0 win at Stoke City, means that the two familiar foes are now tied for the Premiere League
By Austin TalbertDaily Texan Staff
Beware the Top 10. We are but four weeks into this
season and already we have seen 10, use all of your fingers and count them, teams lose while ranked in the top 10 of the Asso-ciate Press poll.
As a result of the insanity, in-stead of begging for votes, coach-es are going to start begging poll-sters not to vote for them while burying their teams deep on their own ballots.
While the whole early sea-son has been tough for the top-ranked teams — who have the same survival rate as one of Lindsay Lohan’s cars — this past weekend was a real doozy, as four top tenners fell as fast as Lo-han’s career.
Ole Miss’ sub-par showing on Thursday set the ugly tone for the high ranked teams. I am betting Rebel fans would have rather watched “I Know Who Killed Me.”
Poor Jevan Snead couldn’t get any help from his offensive line or his barber. As a self-proclaimed
college football and hair style ex-pert, it is impossible for me to de-cide which was worse: the pro-tection the Rebels’ offensive line gave Snead or the chili-bowl hair cut that had Jevan looking, and playing, like a 10-year-old.
The other teams, including Mi-ami, Penn State and California, can’t blame their hair. Though the few hairs Joe Paterno has left would already be gone if his Nit-tany Lions had to face Iowa ev-ery week.
So begrudgingly, here is this week’s top 10, which will no doubt face yet another reconstruc-tive surgery come next week.
TexasColt McCoy and the Long-
horns finally executed like a No. 1 team, as Will Muschamp’s fe-rocious defense strip-mined UTEP.
The Miners managed a measly 53 yards of total offense, but more importantly for Texas, the Long-horns kept forcing turnovers, steal-ing the ball five times.
FloridaTim Tebow did his best
Colt McCoy impression, and one week after McCoy led his team to a conference win while under the weather Tebow did the same. Though Tebow didn’t fare as
well, leaving the game and spend-ing the night in a Kentucky hospi-tal after suffering a concussion.
The stat of the game: Tebow threw up more times (3) than to-tal yards Kentucky had in the first quarter (1) after which the Gators had a 31-0 lead.
AlabamaArkansas quarterback
Ryan Mallett may be tall,
but his towering presence wasn’t enough to dissect the Alabama defense, who allowed the Ar-kansas quarterback to only com-plete 12 of his 35 passes. Nick Sa-ban and company, who contin-ue to impress, head to Kentucky next week and hope their quarter-back doesn’t end up fertilizing the Wildcat’s field too.
May-Ying Lam | Daily Texan Staff
Senior receiver Jordan Shipley runs the ball against UTEP. Shipley led all receivers with 122 yards on 10 receptions.
Griffin’s injury a big blow to Bears’ dreams of a bowl
Rich Glickstein | Associated Press
TCU’s Antoine Hicks, left, pulls down the winning touchdown in front of Clemson’s Byron Maxwell during the fourth quarter at Memorial Stadium.
Rod Aydelotte | Associated Press
Baylor sophomore quarterback Robert Griffin is examined after sus-taining a torn ACL in his right knee on Saturday.
BIG 12 continues on page 9
Scott Heppell | Associated Press
Chelsea’s Didier Drogba vies for the ball with Wigan Athletic’s Emmerson Boyce during an English Premier League soccer match at The DW Stadium.
EURO continues on page 9
TOP continues on page 9
Man U finds itself back on top of EPL standings
UT running game established
Despite loss of Tebow, Florida remains at No. 2 spot
TEXAS continues on page 9
Top three stay unchanged while the rest of the Top 10 gets shuffled around
NCAA FOOTBALL
EUROPEAN SOCCER
NCAA FOOTBALL
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7Tuesday, September 29, 2009
7 SPTS
SPORTS Tuesday, September 29, 20098
Texas FightFreshman fullback Jamison Berryhill tries to break free from a UTEP defender’s tackle late in the game during Texas’ 64-7 win over the Miners on Saturday. The game closed out Texas’ non-conference sched-ule, and the team will take the week off before resuming play at home against Colorado on Oct. 10.
May-Ying Lam | Daily Texan Staff
Top, Texas defenders Aaron Williams, Earl Thomas and Emmanuel Acho take down Texas Tech’s Eric Stephens. Bottom, Malcolm Williams tack-les UTEP’s punter, Greg Hiett, after a bad snap.
Eric Ou | Daily Texan Staff
Eric Ou | Daily Texan Staff
Caleb Miller | Daily Texan Staff
Sara Young | Daily Texan Staff
Above, sophomore wide receiver Dan
Buckner celebrates one of his two touch-downs against UTEP.
Right, senior receiver Jordan Shipley runs
the ball after a recep-tion as junior receiver
John Chiles blocks a ULM defender.
As the Longhorns enter their bye week at a perfect 4-0, The Daily Texan closes the first month of the college foot-ball season by taking an illustrative look at some of the highlights from Texas’ first three home games.
— Chris Tavarez
8 SPTS
SPORTS Tuesday, September 29, 20098
Texas FightFreshman fullback Jamison Berryhill tries to break free from a UTEP defender’s tackle late in the game during Texas’ 64-7 win over the Miners on Saturday. The game closed out Texas’ non-conference sched-ule, and the team will take the week off before resuming play at home against Colorado on Oct. 10.
May-Ying Lam | Daily Texan Staff
Top, Texas defenders Aaron Williams, Earl Thomas and Emmanuel Acho take down Texas Tech’s Eric Stephens. Bottom, Malcolm Williams tack-les UTEP’s punter, Greg Hiett, after a bad snap.
Eric Ou | Daily Texan Staff
Eric Ou | Daily Texan Staff
Caleb Miller | Daily Texan Staff
Sara Young | Daily Texan Staff
Above, sophomore wide receiver Dan
Buckner celebrates one of his two touch-downs against UTEP.
Right, senior receiver Jordan Shipley runs
the ball after a recep-tion as junior receiver
John Chiles blocks a ULM defender.
As the Longhorns enter their bye week at a perfect 4-0, The Daily Texan closes the first month of the college foot-ball season by taking an illustrative look at some of the highlights from Texas’ first three home games.
— Chris Tavarez
8 SPTS
Brandon Carter was suspended in-definitely and stripped of his cap-taincy on Sunday by Leach. Leach also took this opportunity to ban Twitter from all his players after it was reported by the Lubbock Av-alanche-Journal that linebacker Marlon Williams apparently sent out a message asking why he was still in a meeting room if “the head coach can’t even be on time.” Tech usually has a meeting on Sunday morning and a light practice Sun-day evenings.
Williams’ message has since been deleted and Carter, who post-ed on the Web site after the game that he was disappointed with the Red Raiders’ season, no longer has a Twitter page.
Internal AffairsLast week members of the Kan-
sas football and basketball teams engaged in a series of fights on campus, the University Daily Kan-san reported. Students were said to have seen Dezmon Briscoe, junior cornerback Chris Harris and others scuffle with a number of basketball players Wednesday morning out-side of a residence hall. A similar in-cident also took place the night be-fore. Although many students who witnessed the fight asked not to be identified, multiple sources con-firmed that there had been an al-tercation between two large groups of players on Wednesday morning, and campus police questioned ath-letes on both teams.
Representatives from the two squads released a collective state-ment after the fight.
“Now we want everyone to know that we have met and talk-ed it out. We realize we’re all Jay-hawks,” the statement said. “We’re proud of what both teams have ac-complished. We appreciate the sup-port these teams give each other. We’ll be in the stands rooting for
each other like we always have.”“We’re college students, we’re
young people, [and] we’re all go-ing to make mistakes,” Harris said. “Everybody’s cool, every-thing’s done.”
Harris was one of two football player questioned by police in the wake of the fights.
Senior quarterback Todd Rees-ing put the final nail in the coffin after Saturday’s 38-28 victory over Southern Mississippi.
“It’s over with, it’s done,” Rees-ing said. “I don’t think we need to talk about it any more.”
No statement has been made on possibly punishing the players in-volved, but Kansas athletics di-rector Lew Perkins said Saturday that it was, “the most complicat-ed thing I’ve ever dealt with my whole life.”
Two for K-StateDuring Saturday’s win over
Kent State, receiver Brandon Banks became the first Wildcat in school history to return two kickoffs for touchdowns in a single game. The first came directly after a Kent State touchdown and broke a 7-all tie when Banks split the Golden Flash coverage and ran 91 yards for the score with just over two minutes to go in the opening quarter. He also started the second half with a 92-yard return for a touchdown.
“It’s a little early yet, but it would be very difficult not to see [Banks] as one of the more prominent re-turn guys we’ve had,” said head coach Bill Snyder.
Banks earned the Big 12’s Spe-cial Teams Player of the Week hon-ors for his efforts, the first time a Wildcat has been recognized this season. Texas safety Earl Thomas was named the Defensive Player of the Week for his two-interception performance against UTEP, while Missouri’s Danario Alexander and Iowa State’s Alexander Robison shared the offensive award.
lead. Liverpool is in third and con-tinued their recent impressive form with a 6-1 beat down of Hull City while fourth place Tottenham and fifth place Arsenal both came out on top against Burnley and Ful-ham, respectively.
Union of European Football Assocations
Defending UEFA champions Barcelona and Real Madrid have both continued their torrid starts to the season. Both teams have the maximum 15 points from their first five games, and there is little doubt that one of them will take the La Liga crown.
Summer signings have been pay-ing off for both teams. Zlatan Ibra-himovic’s became the first player to
score in his first five league games for Barca. The celebrated Cristia-no Ronaldo has been absolutely on point for Real Madrid as well - through six total matches, the Por-tuguese winger has already record-ed seven goals.
Italian Serie A In contrast to the other re-
nowned leagues, the top of the ta-ble is not headed by an odds-on favorite. Sampdoria has startled everybody in Italian Serie A, in-cluding maybe even themselves, as they are in sole possession of first place. The club has earned 15 points from six games, and is one point ahead of powerhouse Ju-ventus. This weekend, Sampdor-ia proved their start hasn’t been a complete fluke – the top-ranked team beat Inter Milan, the defend-ing Italian champions, 1-0.
Boise StateThe Broncos ran over
Bowling Green, but more importantly their season-open-ing win over Oregon is looking stronger as the Ducks quacked past Cal.
HoustonThe Cougars are on
the prowl for another Big 12 victim, already dropping Oklahoma State and now Tex-as Tech.
Though they should lose points for their weak rushing of the field after their win over Tech, at home, while they were ranked and the Red Raiders weren’t.
TCUWhile BYU, anoth-
er Mountain West team, was getting all of the early atten-tion, the Horned Frogs have si-lently sneaked their way past two ACC teams on the road. While they may be ultimately compet-ing with Boise State for an at-large BCS berth, if TCU can run the table in the Mountain West, their strength of schedule will crush the Broncos’.
Cincinnati The Bearcats moved
past Fresno State to be-come an ultra-quiet 4-0 this sea-son. While the chili in Cincinna-ti may be backward — there is no room for spaghetti in a bowl of red — Tony Pike, who is com-
pleting just over 70 percent of his passes this year has some-thing right. And in the ultra-weak Big East, look for Cincin-nati to roll to another title.
IowaI have to give the
Hawkeyes credit for roll-ing into Happy Valley and the “white-out” and dropping Penn State. After the Nittany Lions took a 10-0 lead in first quarter and looked as if they were on their way to destroying Iowa, the Hawkeyes responded with 21 unanswered points.
KansasSo far, the only prob-
lems the Jayhawks are having this season are with their fellow Jayhawks on the basketball
team. If they can keep the Capu-let-Montague feud with their hard-court bretheren from ex-ploding, they should have a good shot at winning the Big 12 north.
MichiganThe Wolverines
survived a scare from Indiana, and while it wasn’t pretty— I am talking about Tate Forcier, who made perhaps the worst decision I have ever seen a college quarterback make that led to a defensive lineman pick-ing off a lob pass — it was a win. And for all the talk about Ohio State and Penn State preseason, it looks like the showdown in two weeks when the Wolverines head to Iowa will be a much big-ger game than expected in the Big Ten.
The weekend leaves Texas in the same position it started, with plen-ty of able bodies but no clear No. 1.
Single-handedlyCoaches have been telling us
about it all season. He does it all the time in practice, they say. Sat-urday finally saw the unveiling of Dan Buckner’s great hands, cul-minating in a sensational one-handed catch by the lanky soph-
omore over a defender’s head for a touchdown.
“[Buckner] made some Jermi-chael Finley-type plays with one-handed catches down the middle,” Texas head coach Mack Brown said after practice one day during the preseason. “He doesn’t have good hands, he has great hands.”
Buckner’s catching ability has been noticed by more than just the coaches. Despite starting just his fourth game on a veteran receiving corps, Buckner is second on the
team in catches and yards, with 23 receptions for 294 yards, while leading with four touchdowns. He is quickly becoming one of Colt McCoy’s favorite weapons.
“He made that look really pret-ty, didn’t he?” McCoy said about Buckner’s catch. “Dan matched up on a linebacker is always a mismatch.”
He finished with two touch-downs for the day, the other com-ing off a 36-yard catch and run down the middle of the field,
while registering six catches for 71 yards.
“I didn’t know it was one-hand-ed,” Buckner said. “Colt put the ball in a place where I could make a play.”
As for the recognition and at-tention from fans and opposing defenses alike that could come from putting up big numbers and big catches?
“I don’t want the extra atten-tion,” Buckner said with a smile. “I’m good.”
From page 7
May-Ying Lam | Daily Texan Staff
Junior running back Vondrell McGee runs the ball against UTEP . McGee had Texas’ first 100 yard game of the season as he rushed for 104 yards in Texas’ 64-7 rout of the Miners on Saturday.
BIG 12: Kansas’ biggest rival may be right on KU campus
EURO: Summer trades are paying off
From page 7
From page 7From page 7
TEXAS: Buckner’s TDs prove his worth
TOP: Houston climbs into top five with win over Tech
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SPORTSTuesday, September 29, 2009 9
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COMICS Tuesday, September 29, 200910
Yesterday’s solution
45 1 2 3 9 8 4 3 2 8 66 8 4 1 2 52 5 8 4 1 2 9 3 1 5 8 4
2 6 4 1 5 7 9 8 38 3 5 2 6 9 4 7 19 7 1 3 8 4 5 2 65 1 6 8 7 3 2 9 47 2 3 9 4 1 6 5 84 8 9 6 2 5 1 3 71 5 8 7 9 6 3 4 26 4 2 5 3 8 7 1 93 9 7 4 1 2 8 6 5
10 COMICS
COMICS Tuesday, September 29, 200910
Yesterday’s solution
45 1 2 3 9 8 4 3 2 8 66 8 4 1 2 52 5 8 4 1 2 9 3 1 5 8 4
2 6 4 1 5 7 9 8 38 3 5 2 6 9 4 7 19 7 1 3 8 4 5 2 65 1 6 8 7 3 2 9 47 2 3 9 4 1 6 5 84 8 9 6 2 5 1 3 71 5 8 7 9 6 3 4 26 4 2 5 3 8 7 1 93 9 7 4 1 2 8 6 5
10 COMICS
LIFE&ARTSTuesday, September 29, 2009 11
Vendor offers alternative hot dog
By Solomon WangDaily Texan Staff
Upon first look, the unique gas-tronomic experience that is Rigo’s Madness appears to be yet anoth-er hot dog cart on the Drag. Giv-ing a double take, many are sur-prised to find that this push cart boasts intriguing goodies such as caramelized onions, roasted red peppers and many more, all pre-pared in hot dog fashion.
Rodrigo Jaramillo, the man behind the Madness, concocted these dogs from childhood in-spirations and his culinary back-ground. Coming to Austin from Chicago just three months ago, Jaramillo has brought with him experience from working with some of the higher-end restau-rants in the Windy City. Jaramil-lo’s culinary background is clear in his assortment of unique in-gredients packed into his hot dog offerings.
The ingredients are packed into a mere two-item menu: the “Austin Style Dog,” a meat-lov-er ’s dog, and “The Eggplant Dog,” a vegan option.
Containing a conglomerate of toppings, “The Austin Style” Dog yields a Vienna all-beef dog topped with mashed pota-toes, hickory smoked bacon, car-amelized onions, green Tabasco sauce, buttered corn and roasted red peppers atop a simple Mrs. Baird’s bun. Though paying trib-ute to a classic hot dog bun, Ri-go’s could perhaps find a hearti-er choice to stuff the artery-clog-ging goodness with. Nonethe-less, you can’t go wrong with meat and potatoes, especially on some white bread smothered in other taste boosters. The “Aus-tin Style” is very messy, but it’s what you’d expect: a madden-ing few bites of greasy, flavorful, salty goodness.
For environmentally-friendly diners or those looking for light-er fare, “The Eggplant Dog” ac-
tually offers an even more in-teresting combination of ingre-dients: roasted eggplant stuffed with mushroom hash, caramel-ized onions, scallions, cashews, roasted red peppers and mus-tard. Texture is key as the cream-iness of the onions, peppers and eggplant contrast with the crunch of the scallions and ca-shews. Disappointingly, this veg-an option is overwhelmed with
saltiness galore. The eggplant is oddly reminiscent of a tamale, though soggy and stuffed with ground mushroom.
Offering a limited menu with fresh ingredients allows Rigo’s to concentrate on what is important: quality. Though the hot dogs are a convenient grab-and-go on the way to class, both are a bit steep in price at $3.50 each. For some students, $3.50 for street food
may not seem that reasonable, but Rigo’s offers an interesting al-ternative to a bagel or sub.
Rodrigo’s Madness is located at 2310 Guadalupe St., right in front of Swirll Yogurt Shop. Passing by the University Co-op or com-ing across from West Campus, you can’t miss the cart’s bright red-and-white umbrella. The cart is open Monday through Friday (weather permitting) from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
FOOD REVIEW
Rodrigo Jaramillo, owner of Rigo’s Madness, prepares his “Eggplant Dog” for Miachel Pruett, an advertising senior. The new hot dog stand offers a menu of two items including the “Austin Style Dog.”
Michael Baldon Daily Texan Staff
Curbside stand provides students with new take on ordinary frankfurter
Peter Gabriel and New Order. Paul Simon and David Byrne
went to Africa in the ‘80s and came back with weirder, dens-er and more complex songs filled with polyrhythm and unorthodox instrumentation. Now we turn to African artists like The Very Best’s Esau Mwamwaya for a sim-pler, soulful pop song that harkens back to Motown and The Beach Boys. The Warm Heart of Africa won’t be labeled exotic merely due to niceties but because it’s more in tune with what makes a good pop song then most modern American albums.
— Allistair Pinsof
Avett Brothers I and Love and You
The music world has seen many successful sibling duos. Richard and Karen Carpenter, Tegan and Sara Quin and even quasi-brother and sister Jack and Meg White have put all their familial squabbles aside to master their individual genres. With the duo’s first release on a ma-jor label, the Avett Brothers have ce-mented their position as folk’s gold-en children. I and Love and You is a stunning, diverse collection of pia-no ballads, bluegrass freak-outs and bright folk-rock.
Seth and Scott Avett, aided by upright bassist Bob Crawford, have made the dreaded switch from indie to major label seamless-ly, without the watered-down feel-ing that many bands take on with a “corporate sellout.”
The Avetts voice the plight of the common man in an elegant syntax akin to musician-poets of the ‘60s and ‘70s. But rather than the political generalizations of their folk forefathers, the Avetts write about the quiet, relatable re-alizations that everyone has.
Perhaps the most impressive as-pect of I and Love and You is the or-ganic feel that they bring to both the heart-wrenching slow songs and the bouncy folk-pop that the album vacillates between. Each level receives the same amount of attention and care. The title track “I and Love and You,” an under-stated beginning to the album, is just as natural as “Kick Drum Heart,” an energetic homage to twee-pop that draws lightly on the Avett’s punk roots. “The Per-fect Space” interweaves the two opposites; what begins as a creep-ing, string-laced song breaks into a danceable piano frenzy in the self-proclaimed “part-two.”
I and Love and You is a beauti-fully crafted album, both lyrical-ly and musically. It is the rare kind of album that gives an immedi-ate sense of nostalgia and famil-iar warmth that makes you part of the family.
— Abbey Johnson
MUSIC: Brothers team up for major label folk debut
From page 12
French leaders defend filmmakerBy Angela Doland
The Associated PressPARIS — Was Roman Polan-
ski “thrown to the lions because of ancient history?” That’s what the French culture minister says — though not everyone in France agrees.
The French government has rushed to the filmmaker’s de-fense since he was arrested this weekend in Switzerland on a U.S. warrant in connection with his guilty plea to having having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
Government ministers and France’s cultural world have lauded Polanski as a great art-ist, a family man and a survivor of countless hardships who de-serves peace at age 76.
In Paris, Polanski is not a fugi-tive wanted for a sex crime, but rather a revered artist and public figure who has never had much reason to hide.
While Polanski would have risked arrest to attend the 2003 Academy Awards in Los Ange-les — where he was named best director for “The Pianist” — he is free to climb the red carpet at ev-
ery Cannes Film Festival.Actor Harrison Ford eventu-
ally delivered the golden Oscar statuette to Polanski at another French film festival in the Nor-mandy beach town of Deauville.
Polanski, who has dual French and Polish nationality, has long been protected by France’s re-fusal to extradite its citizens. France’s indulgence toward art-ists has played into sympathy for him among the country’s elites, as has the French distaste for peering into public figures’ pri-vate lives.
Few, if any, prominent figures came out publicly against Polans-ki, but there were signs that many ordinary French people disagreed with the government’s position.
Many newspaper readers re-sponded with angry comments on the newspapers’ Web sites lashing out at France’s govern-ment and cultural leaders. One comment in Le Figaro read: “Our so-called intelligentsia lacks modesty, restraint and impartial-ity when one of its own has be-haved badly.”
Polanski has lived in France
since he fled the United States in 1978, after pleading guilty to one count of unlawful sexual inter-course with a minor but before being formally sentenced.
His early life was marked by tragedy — his mother died at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, and his second wife, actress Sha-ron Tate, was murdered in 1969 by followers of Charles Manson. She was eight months pregnant.
While French Cabinet minis-ters are generally cautious about commenting on the legal affairs of other countries, saying they don’t want to interfere, they have been astonishingly outspoken on behalf of Polanski, who could be extradited to the United States.
Both French Culture Minis-ter Frederic Mitterrand and For-eign Minister Bernard Kouchner stressed Polanski’s artistic gifts in their defense of him.
Polanski’s victim, Samantha Geimer, who identified herself publicly years ago, has joined in Polanski’s bid for dismissal, say-ing she wants the case to be over. She sued Polanski and reached an undisclosed settlement.
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Alice in Chains
Black Gives Way to Blue Blink-182 did it. Creed did it. Limp
Bizkit did it. The list of popular ‘90s bands reuniting is growing exponen-tially by the day, so what’s one more? The most recent group to jump on the bandwagon is ultra-successful grunge act Alice in Chains, who release Black Gives Way to Blue today.
The reunion is one that many have expressed concern about, due to the lack of founding member Layne Sta-ley, who died in 2002. Although an in-tegral reason the band became suc-cessful in the first place, his absence from the group’s newest album is barely noticeable, thanks to the fact that his replacement, William DuVall sings almost exactly like Staley.
The things that made Alice in Chains so popular when they first hit the scene were the combination of melodic vocal harmonies along with power chord-riddled guitar lines, full
of grit and distorted to the extreme. Staley’s intense lyrics dealing with de-pression and addiction made the out-fit an R-rated band for sure, and an adult alternative for the teenagers fall-ing over themselves for Nirvana.
Unfortunately, the band has done nothing to update or change that style for Black Gives Way to Blue. The origi-nal members, as well as DuVall, know exactly where the band’s wheelhouse has been for ages and don’t consider it prudent to make any alterations. The guitars still chug along with efficiency, DuVall now harmonizes with Cantrell, and once every few songs the electrics get unplugged in favor of acoustic instrumentation.
The same things that made the band worthwhile in the early ‘90s are still here, including memorably heavy guitar lines like those found on “All Secrets Known” and “Check My Brain,” but those riffs also fol-low the blueprint of every other Alice in Chains song. There’s no “Rooster” or “Down in a Hole” on this album,
but it’s not for lack of trying. It’s clear the band wants to recreate the success those songs created, but without evo-lution, without progress, it’s an im-possible feat.
— Robert Rich
The Very Best
The Warm Heart of Africa Like Afrikan Boy and M.I.A. before,
The Very Best have built a fanbase off of an Internet mixtape. After writ-ing some tracks together, Radioclit, a production duo from Europe, collab-orated with young Milawi pop sing-er Esau Mwamwaya to form The Very Best. The group’s debut mixtape was built on the back of pop and R&B hits with minimal production touches and lots of vocal reimagining. It’s interest-ing to see how the group carries on without that backbone of established pop songs, but anyone who’s heard “Dinosaurs on the Ark” can attest that the originals from the mixtape were the highlight.
Many months later, The Very Best has arrived with 12 new tracks and one cover. Depending on how you felt about the group’s initial mixtape, it’s hard to consider The Warm Heart of Africa a disappointment. The al-bum starts with the gorgeous “Yalira,” which blends synth-bass, multi-vo-cal harmonies, wistful vocal samples and tribal drums in its opening min-ute alone.
“Chalo” carries a sleepy party vibe with a flurry of gleeful synths that sound as if they’re taken from an ‘80s TV show theme. The title track makes for an early album highlight thanks to the pitch perfect duo of Esau and Ezra Koenig.
The rest of the tracklist isn’t as strong, but it still manages to cov-er more ground then you’d expect from such a distinct sounding re-cord. “Mfumu” is especially notewor-thy, thanks to Radioclit giving Esau a sandbox to play in that is equal parts
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Life&Arts Editor: Leigh PattersonE-mail: [email protected]: (512) 232-2209www.dailytexanonline.comLIFE&ARTS
THE DAILY TEXAN
12Tuesday, September 29, 2009
By Layne LynchDaily Texan Staff
As said by the great character Gusteau in the mov-ie “Ratatouille,” “Anyone can cook,” but, what he didn’t mention is that instructional literature is ab-solutely necessary.
The best way to learn to cook is to study. Cook-books house a wealth of knowledge. They come in every language, from every country and the best are ridden with splatter marks and have pages fall-ing out of their spines. Here are five cookbooks that would be of use to anyone — especially college stu-dents trying to up their culinary repertoire.
“How To Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, countless peo-
ple have told me that this is their cooking bible. The convenience of easy recipes helps a reader under-stand the roots of basic cooking that build up the confidence to move on to trickier recipes. The New York Times food writer Mark Bittman has a wealth of knowledge of every type of world cuisine. For those who are devout vegetarians, Bittman also re-cently released a version of the book called “How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.” In both of the books, his helpful tips like “12 Must-Have Kitchen Tools,” “Frosting a Cake,” “Grinding Your Own Spices” and many others help turn a college student into a chef.
“Barefoot Contessa at Home” by Ina Garten Behold: Food Network’s own Barefoot Contes-
sa, the entertainer who lives in the Hamptons and at times comes off a tiny bit pretentious. However, there is no denying the lady can cook. Easy recipes like buttermilk mashed potatoes, blue cheese burg-ers and “omelets for two” are what make the cook-book so viable. However, buy this book with caution — cooking a decadent meal like this is great for a once-a-week date night, but relying on Garten every night would pack on more than the “Freshman 15.” One of her cakes has four sticks of butter in the icing and cake combined.
“Rosa’s New Mexican Table” by Roberto Santibañez
Santibañez’s cookbook is a useful overview of ev-ery dish in Mexican cuisine. He honors readers with recipes that they may not have considered making at home, such as flour and corn tortillas. The pico de gallo and guacamole recipes are delicious for din-ner-party appetizers, and the margarita section is elaborate, and everything is easy to make. The only downside is the attainment of some ingredients; things like banana leaves are not easy to find in just any market.
Weight Watchers cookbooks Even if the reader isn’t on Weight Watchers, the
recipes within the pages of the company’s cookbooks are a great way to keep the pounds from packing on. And though they’re a rather embarrassing addition to a bookshelf, the books allow for a change of life-style while still eating good food. The only downside is that some of the recipes are hit or miss. Not every-thing written is necessarily absolutely divine, and “healthy” doesn’t always translate to “delicious.”
Crock-Pot cookbooks Even though Crock-Pots are touted as being easy
and quick, these are really exaggerations. Crock-Pots take sometimes eight to 12 hours to cook a meal, but for college students that shouldn’t be a big deal. Stick all the ingredients in a pot, turn it on low, re-turn from studying and dinner is served. A Crock-Pot is a great investment, with many stores like Tar-get and Walmart selling some for as low as $16.
By Lisa HolungDaily Texan Columnist
One of my weekend rituals is to sift through cookbooks, magazines and cooking blogs to find a dish that will inspire me to give up takeout and actu-ally cook a meal. But many many rec-ipes are made for more than just one. As a student who mainly cooks for her-
self, I am left wishing there was some-thing of a more personal size to make.
Instead of going out and buying large quantities of ingredients for my single serving dinners, I try to whip something up from what I have left in the refrigerator. This frittata recipe is an example of one of those spur-of-the-moment creations.
Frittatas are traditionally thicker and more quiche-like in appearance, but this recipe shrinks the portion size and satisfies that quick craving for food with a breakfast feel.
It’s a three-step process, which sim-plifies things when you’re in a rush. Throw some ingredients in a pan, pour in some eggs and wait 10-15 minutes.
Voila, you’re finished. One of my favorite things to do
with this glorified omelet is to cut it up into slices and dip it in ketchup. You could also put pieces of it in a sandwich or eat it as is. Either way, find a tasty version that fits you, and enjoy not having to eat the same thing for four days straight.
By Gerald RichDaily Texan Staff
UT zombie fans rejoice; while most will have to pay to see “Zom-bieland” on Oct. 2, the Student Events Center Film Committee will host a free advanced screen-ing tonight at 7:30 p.m. There’s even going to be a zombie cos-tume contest.
The film features an odd cast in-cluding Woody Harrelson (“No Country For Old Men”), Jesse Eisenberg (“The Squid and the Whale”), Abigail Breslin (“Lit-
tle Miss Sunshine”) and Emma Stone (“Superbad”) as some of the last survivors of a zombie plague. They battle zombies across the country, eventually taking shelter in an old amusement park.
Hardcore zombie fans looking for great zombie action should not be disappointed.
“Our zombies are ferocious, in-fected people that move erratical-ly,” the casting director told MTV’s Movie Blog. “They are diseased, as opposed to undead. These are not the lumbering walking dead of
Romero’s zombie movies, but in-stead the super jacked up ‘28 Days Later’ / ‘Dawn of the Dead’ zom-bies. They are scary and gnarly and gross.”
Fantastic Fest hosted the world premiere of the film this past Fri-day to a throng of attendees dressed as zombies to positive re-views. Although some may scratch their head as to why adorable Bres-lin is teaming-up with tough guy Harrelson, the diverse cast seems to be the best part.
“[The characters] are a puzzle
that doesn’t fit together, but they still work,” said undeclared soph-omore Ryan Sanchez, who saw the movie Friday.
“The movie’s on the same plane as ‘Shaun of the Dead,’” Sanchez said. “There’s still some terror as-pects to it, [but] you’re not afraid for your life.”
Overall, the film promises to be a big hit for relatively no-name director Ruben Fleischer, whose most notable credit is directing a couple episodes of “Jimmy Kim-mel Live.”
Zombie fans anticipate film release
Bruno Morlan | Daily Texan Staff
Brandon “Chippy” Barnett poses for pictures outside the “Zombieland” premier at the Paramount on Friday. Barnett was one of many zombies who was hired to be present at the Austin premier by Arlington-based company Zombie Manor.
Texas Union committee offers free advanced screening to students
Cookbooksmake it easyto brush upon chef skills
Quick frittata recipe serves as fast food alternative
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BOOK REVIEWS
spinach and ham frittata
Tasty Tuesdays
4 eggs1 cup uncooked spinach¼ cup diced onions½ cup diced ham½ tsp salt¼ tsp black pepperOlive oil for cooking
Sauté spinach, onions and ham in non-stick pan with olive oil for a few minutes.Mix salt and pepper into eggs, pour eggs into pan.Cover pan and cook for 10-15 min-utes, checking occasionally to make sure bottom isn’t burnt. Flip if de-sired. Serve warm.
Serves four.
DirectionsIngredients
Shelley Neuman | Daily Texan Staff
Frittatas are a simple dish that can serve as a snack or entire meal and are easy to customize to your particular tastes.
CD REVIEWS
Collaboration brings African vibe to American pop music
MUSIC continues on page 11
12 LIFE
