UPbeat Fall 2014

A University Press magazine

November 2014

China Experience See page 16.

Inside: • Sour Sugar • Online disconnection • Siblings have a blast

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UPbeat A University Press Magazine November 2014

PEOPLE — page 4

EDITOR Lauren Van Gerven

SOCIAL MEDIA KILLERS — page 8

STAFF Kristen Stuck

SUGAR RUSH — page 12

Mallery Matt William Jones Diana Chavez Johnathan Ross Elizabeth Grimm Molly Porter Lainie Harris Lane Fortenberry Robert McDonald Brooke Stinebrickner

ADVERTISING Melissa Conley

This issue of UPbeat is a production of the University Press staff.

UNIVERSITY PRESS A THIRTEEN-TIME ASSOCIATED PRESS MANAGING EDITORS AWARD WINNER

©University Press 2014

Cover photo by William Jones www.lamaruniversitypress.com

CHINA IN PICTURES — page 16

SANDBLASTING — page 20

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PEOPLE

‘Dressing’ the Part EVAN WEATHINGTON Some people dream of making it to the big screen, while some want to dress those who do.

Lamar theater graduate Evan Weathington and her fiance Steven Hoffman own their own theater costume company called The Prop Cabinet. The company, which they founded in July, specializes in making and renting costumes for plays, theater departments and Halloween events. “There’s a number of schools around here that are underfunded and don’t have the resources, so we

Text and photo by Lane Fortenberry

wanted to give them the opportunity to have whatever they needed,” Evan says. “It’s just the thing I found that I’m best at.” She says she likes acting, but she also likes making things. “I feel like you should just do whatever you’re best at and this is what I do.” Evan says she was inspired by her mother. “She has been making costumes and hats for me my whole life and I wanted to learn how to do that. I guess you could say I just love everything about theater.”

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Cultured through Opera CHRIS MARTIN Chris Martin is 5-feet 3-inches tall, but when the Beaumont senior opens his mouth, his operatic tenor fills the room. “Opera to me is no longer a dream,” he says. “I’m starving for a taste of the stage.” Chris started singing early in his childhood because his mother was a music teacher and taught him about music theory. He sang in the church choir with his brother, and at one point his mother attempted to teach him piano, but it was clear his voice would be his musical outlet. When he didn’t qualify for the UIL state finals in 11th grade, he realized that he needed to be more committed to singing. “I obviously didn’t know enough about it, I needed to figure it out,” he says. “Once college came, I decided I was going to be a vocal performance major.” Chris believes that opera enhances culture and should be respected. “I usually get praised for being cultured, for wanting to immerse myself in something that isn’t a part of what today’s young culture listens to,” he says. “Anybody and everybody should want to culture themselves — this music came first.” Chris says people are surprised that he listens to classical music and is pursuing a degree in classical music. “They are often shocked because it’s not music everyone listens to, especially as a young African American,” he says. Chris may be small in stature, but his voice will carry him to a big career.

Text and photo by Elizabeth Grimm

Passion for Dirt Bikes S

ARAH

Text and photo by Lainie Harris

HOWARD

When Sarah Howard got a dirt bike for her 18th birthday she was a little surprised. It was not something she had asked for, nor even thought about. However, this unexpected gift uncovered a natural ability in her. “Most riders usually practice anywhere from six months to a year before they consider racing,” the 22-year old says. After only one month of practice, Sarah entered a race. “I just knew I could do it,” she says.

“There was another girl in the class who had ridden for a year, and I beat her my first time during practice.” The Lamar business junior placed fourth in the first race in which she competed and has traveled as far as Cycle Ranch in San Antonio to race.

Sarah raced in more than 100 races and placed high in nearly all of them. The Lake Charles resident commutes to attend Lamar full-time, as well as working fulltime, which leaves little time for anything other than sleep, she says, so racing has been put on the back burner — for now.

Motocross is her passion and she says nothing will keep her off the track forever.

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Aspergers Takes Stage

WESLEY GIFFORD

Wesley Gifford uses Asperger syndrome as a punch line. The Pensacola senior is a standup comic who builds his comedy around his condition. “The thing about standup comedy is that a lot of your act is derived from your life, and so I write about it and it helps out a lot — it makes me unique,” Wesley says. He writes down his comedy routine or else he says his attention wanders. “I will start to focus on dinosaurs and then I go from one end, to like the nature of God, and then from the nature of God to ‘One time I was at this house party,’” he says, “which gives me this feeling as though I am not focused, and in a lot of ways, I’m not — but it makes me interesting.” Wesley says he sees his comedy as therapy for his condition. “I feel more comfortable talking about my Asperger syndrome now than I did before,” he says. “I’ve learned to embrace my quirky side, so people tend to enjoy me and I enjoy myself more.” Wesley is happy for his audience to laugh with him — while he is just being himself.

Text and photo by Robert McDonald

‘Cutting’ Prices ELIZABETH CLOYS Many college students live on a tight budget, but Elizabeth Cloys found life got a little easier when she became an extreme couponer. “I started in 2013, my coworker got me interested — she showed me where to go and what to do,” the Beaumont senior says. “I started couponing because I found out a lot of things I was getting I was paying too much for. I found out I can get a lot of that pretty cheap or free.” Over time she started collecting coupons from newspapers and in stores. Elizabeth says to be a couponer one really needs Instagram. “You can follow other couponers,” she says. “There are some major ones, and they post deals all the time and break them down for you, and they help you out.” A lot of people clip coupons from the paper and use them in the store, Elizabeth says. “Extreme couponing uses everything — they break down in store and manufacturing couponing. That will bring your price way down.” Elizabeth says that since she started extreme couponing, it is not unusual for her to fill up a shopping basket and pay less than a dollar. “I love couponing,” she says. “I love getting stuff for cheap or free. It is just amazing that the prices that I used to pay for things compared to what I pay now.” A college student lives a hard life — but an extreme couponer lives the cheap life.

Text and photo by Brooke Stinebrickner

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Under the Hood HOA ‘DAVID’ TSAN Stretching over the exposed engine of a 1988 Mazda RX-7, Hoa “David” Tsan says he has always had a passion for cars. “I kind of grew up around it,” he says. “When my parents had me, they had just come here from Vietnam, and I grew up seeing all of that at my aunt’s house. My aunt said I used to crawl under my little electric jeep and pretend to work on it. That’s why I got into mechanical engineering — I’m a big tinkerer, I guess.” Two months ago, the Orange junior began work on an engine swap on a 1988 Mazda RX-7. “Those things originally came with a rotary engine, which isn’t a normal piston engine, but the rotary engines were really not great motors. So what I’m putting in it is an iron version of a corvette motor,” David says. “Essentially, I’m shoving a big American V8 in a Japanese car — I want people to be really confused.” David, who works with pipe-stress analysis as an intern for Richard Design Services, says he isn’t sure what the future holds. Regardless of where his career in mechanical engineering takes him, though, he says he will always make time for tinkering.

Text and photo by Molly Porter

‘Paws’ for Thought C

ISSIE

Cissie Owen has 20 little shadows scurrying about her house. “I have a cat rescue,” she says. “The name is Furry Purries.” The adjunct instructor of political science and Earth and space sciences started the rescue in 2007. “I worked with some other people that had cat rescues and I wanted to start my own instead,” Cissie says.

“It’s just a small home rescue. I have 20 cats right now.” After moving to Silsbee at the end of 2013, Cissie had a house built that was more suitable for her rescue. “I had a separate cat house, which is an outdoor enclosure with a playhouse and a little sun deck built for them separately attached to the house,” she says. “They are inside cats only, but I have this little outdoor enclosure now.” Cissie says most of the cats she has were not adopted and had been abused in some way — some physical and some emotional. “They’re safe now,” she says. Cissie sometimes handles fosters and adoptions as well. “When I have ‘adoptables,’ I will allow them to be adopted,” she says. Cissie is always looking for the best home for her “Furry Purries,” and encourages anyone who wants to give them a good home to email meow@cathousecreations.com.

OWENS

Text and photo by Mallory Matt

PSYCHE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

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STORY

AND LAYOUT BY

KRISTEN STUCK • InfogRAPHICS BY DESMOND PICKENS

Photo illustration by Kristen Stuck

Online interactions can lead some to disconnect, bully, murder Editor’s note: Some posts mentioned in this article contain language that may be offensive to some readers.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vine, Tumblr.

Most likely, when one has a spare moment or is waiting in line somewhere, one has checked one of the multitudes of social media sites. It’s easy to see that social media is a huge part of the world today.

People use these websites for entertainment, to get their news, and to connect with people they know. According to statisticbrain.com, 98 percent of 18 to 24 year olds use social media.

“It’s just a really interesting thing, because it is really changing how people communicate, and it is creating some really unique situations that we haven’t seen before,” Jeremy Shelton, Lamar University assistant professor of psychology, said. “One example is the Arab Spring. People have always been relatively dissatisfied with dictatorship rule, but until recently they weren’t able to, on a large scale, communicate about it.

Usually when people are just upset and dissatisfied on their own, they don’t really feel very

empowered to do anything about it, or very few do. However, when you learn that everybody is pretty much upset, and you can now organize and say, ‘Why don’t we all go here at this time and demonstrate’ — that is very powerful. Social media has created a way for large numbers of people to communicate instantaneously.”

There have also been several high-profile crimes in the news that have revolved around social media. There was the case of Sarah Ludemann in 2009, who was killed after fighting over a guy with another girl on Facebook, and the Slender Man stabbing last July, where two 12-year-old girls stabbed their best friend to please the fictional horror character.

One case that evolved online, and subsequently was solved because of social media, was the murder of Skylar Neese.

The story of Neese is something that everyone goes through during high school — jealousy among friends — jealousy that reared its ugly head through social media.

Neese and her two best friends, Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf, were staples in the social media realm. If one looks closely when going through the digital diaries of these three young

girls, it’s easy to see a fatal disconnect occur — the vanishing of morality, reality and, ultimately, Neese herself.

Eddy, an only child of divorced parents, and Neese had been as close as family since they were seven or eight years old. Their freshman year in high school, they met Shoaf, also a child of divorced parents, who came from a strictly religious home. That fall, the girls became a trio of best friends, with Neese and Shoaf each angling to be the one closer to Eddy.

Three is a crowd, and four or more — against all mathematical reason — isn’t.

“Back in the ’50s or ’60s, Fritz Heider did work in what he calls Balance Theory, which looked at essentially that kind of a situation, of when you have three people they have to be balanced in their social relationships,” Shelton said.

“In other words, if you have A, B and C, if A doesn’t like B, then C, if they are going to like A, must also not like B. It has to be balanced that way. If you don’t have that balance it causes problems that you wouldn’t have if the group were larger.

For example, if you have A, B, C, and D, and A doesn’t get along with B and C, well A can just pair off with D and the problem is solved.”

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Each girl was attractive in distinct ways — Shoaf was redheaded, tall, religious, a star in the school plays. Neese, the brunette, was cherubic, spirited and loyal. Eddy, sometimes bottle blonde, sometimes raven haired, was game for anything, charismatic, sexual — the kind of beauty one would see waving atop a float in a parade.

The three girls spent their waking lives posting, texting, tweeting and re-tweeting. As Neese tweeted in April of 2012, “twitter seems to like, swallow me, at times.”

Between the friends, there were more than 9,400 posts. Eddy, without a steady job or the demands of rehearsing a play, had time on her hands — enough time to write 4,374 tweets — almost as much as Neese and Shoaf combined.

Like the dots in a Georges Seurat painting, seen together, a picture emerges.

Through examining the Twitter lives of these three friends, one sees a breakdown occur. When scrolling through their accounts one sees tweets that show the general lives of teenage girls. But then, mixed within tweets like, “where’s everyone at IM BORED,” there are some that tell a deeper story.

A story where two friends decide to kill the third best friend.

Their selfies together capture the bond between the girls — making faces, posing, and even being physically affectionate with each other. But by the spring of 2012, Neese’s tweets seem to show the effects of displacement with, “too bad my friends are having lives without me,” and then, “a girl, a girl. a bitch, a bitch.”

The last two tweets she posted before disappearing on July 5, 2012 only added to the speculation, “you doing shit like that is why I will NEVER completely trust you.” After which, she retweeted, “All I do is hope.”

The last time she was seen was in a grainy black-and-white video getting into an unknown car at 12:31 a.m.

The only thing anyone knew was what Eddy and Shoaf told the police — that Neese had sneaked out to meet them around 11 p.m. to go for a joyride and smoke some pot before Shoaf went off to church camp that weekend. The girls said that before midnight, Neese insisted that they drop her off at the end of her street so her parents wouldn’t hear the car and wake up.

Neese’s parents knew she didn’t run away.

Her contact lenses were still in her room. Her hair straightener was still there. Everything a girl would take was still in her room.

Officers on the case described Eddy’s demeanor as “off,” saying that she was devoid of emotion unless she was asked a question she didn’t want to answer. Shoaf was described as being nonchalant when being interviewed.

When school resumed that August, rumors swirled around the girls — they had been doing drugs and Neese overdosed, the other girls dumped her body out of fear, she had run away, she had met up with an online predator.

The Internet was abuzz with what could have

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happened.

Attacked by digital spirits, Eddy posted a clear warning to all, “no one on this earth can handle me and rachel and if you think you can you’re wrong.”

Law enforcement even got in on the game and created an online persona to flush out more information. What they learned from the accounts was that while Neese was missing, Eddy continued to party.

Eddy and Shoaf began to withdraw from their peers at the high school. The two were brought in again and again for questioning by authorities. Each had a lawyer — they were the only ones who did. As the investigation progressed that fall, law enforcement came to a consensus — the girls knew more than they were telling.

Around winter break, the girls found the pressure unendurable, and began to be homeschooled.

On Dec. 28, 2012, a 911 call was made.

Shoaf was attacking her parents.

She was admitted into a mental-health facility.

For the first time, Shoaf was beyond Eddy’s reach — and her tweets.

The following is a compilation of events as related in interviews to ABC’s “20/20,” Elle magazine, ABC News, the Huffington Post, and court transcripts.

On Jan. 3, Eddy, who had tried in vain to see Shoaf at the facility, posted a picture of the two at last, reunited and smiling, with the caption, “FINALLLLY GOT TO SEE @_racchh <3.” In the photo, Shoaf looks strained, but she had good reason to be — she was wearing a wire. That day

she had gone from the hospital to her lawyer’s office, where she made a deal with the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“We stabbed her.”

Those were the first three words out of her mouth to officials after making the deal.

Reports state that Shoaf pulled over a trash can in case she vomited, and proceeded to recount the events of Neese’s last night in detail.

Eddy and Neese were always fighting. In the spring of 2012, while sitting in science class, Eddy and Shoaf joked about killing Neese. They gave each other a look of agreement and over the next month devised a plan that they would carry out before Shoaf left for camp.

Shoaf took a shovel from her father’s house.

Eddy got two knives from her mother’s kitchen.

They put the shovel, cleaning supplies and a change of clothes in the trunk of Eddy’s car and drove to pick up Neese. Although the temperature was in the 90s, they wore hoodies under which the knives were hidden.

Neese thought that they were just going for a joyride, driving out to a spot where they had gone before and gotten high.

There, sitting at the edge of the woods, Neese got up to get a lighter.

“On three,” — the agreed-upon signal, Shoaf said.

One. Two. Three.

They began stabbing Neese from behind. At one point, she got away, but Shoaf tackled her.

Neese managed to get the knife from Shoaf and cut her below the knee, but then she was overpowered.

See PSYCHE, page 11

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Parents are becoming more involved in their children’s social media interactions

Continued from page 9 When asked why, Shoaf’s only response was, “Well, we didn’t like her.”

After confessing, Shoaf led authorities out to the murder site to find Neese’s body.

The wire Shoaf wore in an attempt to catch Eddy was fruitless. Eddy must have known something was off, and the girls’ friendship devolved.

On Jan. 15 Eddy tweeted, “you don’t even know the amount of shit you have caused,” and on Feb. 2, “this bitch is gunna ruin my life all over again -___-” On March 31, Eddy, as if egging on authorities, while tweeting about something unrelated, wrote, “we really did go on three.”

Throughout the next month she sent out other tweets with veiled references to the murder: April 23: “if only you knew you’d shit right down your leg.”

April 24: “i hate when people blame their own actions and choices on others. deal with it.”

April 28: “i hate seeing or hearing things that remind me of you because you’re the last person i want to be reminded of.”

April 30: “i’ve closed enough windows to know you can never look back.”

The next morning, she was arrested.

Could social media be causing a lack of empathy in these teenagers, leading them to kill their former best friend? Some studies say that could be what is happening in teenagers today.

“It comes down to the nature vs. nurture type of question, and usually they both interact,” Shelton said. “So, were these girls destined to do this regardless? You don’t really know, but because they live in an age that this technology exists, it makes it easier. I bet you could argue that they were more likely to do it in today’s world versus had they been in high school 30 years ago, when it would have probably been more difficult, and there wouldn’t have been these forces acting on them to maybe push them to do it.”

A 2010 study from the University of Michigan showed that the biggest drop in empathy happened after 2000. It showed that in 2010, college students were about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago.

The study cited that the increase in exposure to media could be a factor, because compared to 30 years ago, the average American now is exposed to three times as much non-work related information.

The anonymity factor of social media can also lead to bullying others online.

“In my study, we talk about ‘the mobbing effect,’ or how social media allows one person to be bullied or harassed by multiple people a lot

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easier,” Jennifer Scarduzio, Lamar assistant professor of communication, said in an email interview. “For example, if one person bullies a victim publicly on his or her social media page then other friends/followers can instantly start jumping in and bullying the victim as well.”

According to edudemic.com, 16- to 17-yearold girls are the most common target of cyber bullying — 51 percent have been bullied online, 49 percent have been a cyber-bully, 33 percent have been threatened online, 25 percent have been repeatedly cyber bullied, 24.9 percent have posted mean comments, 93 percent have witnessed cruel behavior on social media and 50 percent never mention cyber bullying to their parents.

Scarduzio’s study created a typology of six types of sexual harassment on social media websites, including unwanted messages, creating fake pages, revenge porn, hostile environments, unwanted comments on pictures, walls and/or feeds, and reposting pictures.

“I also talked about some of the differences and similarities between face-to-face sexual harassment and sexual harassment on social media, which is called cybersexual harassment,” she said. “A similarity is that people tend to ‘blame the victim’ both on social media and face to face, and say that she or he was ‘asking for it’ because of what they were wearing in the case of face-to-face harassment, or the pictures they choose to post in the case of cybersexual harassment.”

Because these incidents of cyber bullying and cybersexual harassment are online, it creates a record of the events. Depending on the victim, they can either be a constant reminder of what was said or a tool used to stop the bully.

“It allows victims to have a digital record of what and how they were bullied,” Scarduzio said.

“For example, I had one participant who was bullied on Twitter and she was able to prevent the bullying from reoccurring because she kept a record of all of the posts and gave them to someone who knew the bully. The person who knew the bully confronted her with the information and proof, and she subsequently stopped bullying the victim.”

Parents are beginning to become more involved in their children’s social media interactions as well. According to edudemic,com, 72 percent closely monitor their children’s online activity, 69 percent are friends with their kids on Facebook, 55 percent of dads use Twitter, 32 percent of moms use Twitter, 72 percent worry their kids will reveal inappropriate information to a stranger, 50 percent have installed parental controls, and 33 percent have helped their children establish privacy settings.

Although research does seem to point to social media as being a cause in a lack of empathy in teenagers and young adults, nothing is definitive.

“It’s hard to read too much into it because the danger you run is that these are really isolated incidents — they are very extraordinary,” Shelton said. “Usually people have some kind of need to explain really extraordinary events, and there may be no common cause at all.

“That is something to keep in mind — there may be no simple common explanation that accounts these events.”

No matter the research, social media is, and most likely will stay, relevant in society for years to come.

“Because it is instantaneous, things can change very quickly,” Shelton said. “Social media is a fascinating thing and it’s a paradigm shifting type of technology — it changes how things work.”

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SWEET SACRIFICE STORY PACKAGE

BY

LAUREN VAN GERVEN

10-day sugar-free challenge opens eyes to nutrition facts If you ask me what part of the day I enjoy most, my answer is simple. I am happiest when I get to eat.

If this makes me sound like I sit around stuffing my face all day, that’s not exactly what I mean. What I mean is, I really enjoy a good meal.

When I wake up in the morning, one of my first thoughts is usually, ‘Mmm, what can I make myself for breakfast this morning?’ I love to cook, and sometimes I even catch myself humming

when I’m eating something really yummy.

Breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I love it all. And I must admit, I also have quite a bit of a sweet tooth. If I had to choose between a salty snack or a sweet snack, nine out of 10 times I would opt for the sweet one.

When I read about the “Fed Up” 10-day sugar-free challenge, I thought I’d give it a go. 10 days of absolutely no sugar — it couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Well, it was, at least for the first couple of days.

To complete the challenge successfully, one can’t have any sugar at all — apart from natural sugars you find in fruits — for 10 days.

According to fedupmovie.com, 80 percent of processed foods have added sugar. It is amazing how many food items one finds have unexpectSee CHALLENGE, page 23

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LAUREN VAN GERVEN

MORE THAN ONE FOOD GROUP TO BLAME FOR HIGH OBESITY RATE According to the World Health Organization, in 2008 more than 1.4 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight. What that means is that they had a body mass index above 20. Of these overweight adults, more than 500 million were obese, with a BMI of more than 25. Overall, more than 10 percent of the world’s adult population was obese.

In 2013, 42 million children under the age of five were overweight or obese.

Overweight and obesity are now linked to more deaths worldwide than underweight.

These are facts.

Even more, these are highly published facts — it’s not exactly news that the general population in the U.S. has become fatter over the past couple of decades.

What not everyone seems to agree on is the reason why.

Some attribute the increase in obesity to a decrease in activity. People don’t participate in sports as much, and aren’t as active as they were a few decades ago. Others say that the increase in obesity has little to do with people being less active. They say that the key is in nutrition.

Earlier this year, a documentary titled “Fed Up” was released. This documentary goes a step further. It specifically blames sugar for the increase in obesity. Some facts that the documentary throws out to back up its claim is that 80 percent of processed food in America contains added sugar, and that sugar is highly addictive. The more sugar one consumes, the more one is going to want.

Sugar lights up the same area of the brains as cocaine.

Connie Ruiz, associate professor and director of the nutrition and dietetics program at Lamar University, said that although the documentary trailer is a little on the sensational side, the presented facts are true.

“Sugar is a simple carbohydrate,” she said. “It’s absorbed pretty quickly. It can raise your blood-sugar pretty quickly and that causes an insulin response, which lowers your blood-sugar quickly, so if you’re really hungry, and you eat something that

has a lot of sugar, then within a short period of time, even though you feel a surge of energy at that point because of the insulin response, you crash later when your bloodsugar gets low.”

Ruiz said that because of this, when it comes to snacking, people are better off choosing snacks that contain protein and fat, rather than just carbohydrates.

“It’s OK to have carbohydrates,” she said.

“But, it’s better to stick to complex carbohydrates with fibers, like a peanut butter sandwich or some crackers and cheese, something like that, then you won’t have that up and down.”

Even natural sugars, such as those in fruit juice, aren’t ideal, Ruiz said.

“We tell diabetics to stay away from juice,” she said. “Although it has natural sugars, juice will raise your blood-sugar faster than fruit, because it doesn’t contain the fiber.”

Ruiz said that due to the increase in childhood obesity, it is no longer recommended for children to have more than four

ounces of fruit juice a day.

“Parents used to put juice in (kids’) bottles at six months,” she said. “Now, that not recommended. It is suggested that children have no juice in the first year of life.”

When it comes to the addictiveness of sugar, Ruiz said that sugar does indeed release certain chemicals that create a sense of happiness and make people crave more of it.

“In nutritional biochemistry, they teach us that serotonin in the brain is a neurotransmitter that favors a positive mood,” she said. “The more serotonin, the happier. This is why it is used in treatments for depression.”

The consumption of sugar releases triptofan, an amino acid that is made into serotonin in the brain, Ruiz said. Triptofan is in competition with other amino acids to get into the brain, and when insulin levels are high, it helps those amino acids to get into tissues all over the body.

See SUGAR, page 22

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PICTURE

STORY BY

WILLIAM JONES, DIANA CHAVEZ

AND

JOHNATHAN ROSS

Scholarships send students Diana Chavez, Johnathan Ross and University Press photo editor William Jones received a year-long scholarship to study graphic design and applied arts at Shandong University in China. The trio say it was a culture shock, and learning to adjust to the new life style and language was difficult at first. “It’s been a very humbling experience,” Ross, a Beaumont senior, says. However, Jones says the students can now get around on buses and even negotiate prices of items in stores. They are taking Chinese language classes and have been learning Mandarin. Since being at the university, they say they have actually made more friends from around the world than from China.

“I’ve made friends from Indonesia, Korea, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, United Kingdom, Africa, India, Mongolia and, of course, China,” Winnie senior Chavez says. Ross played on an international basketball team in a tournament. Jones and Chavez took a weekend trip to Beijing with a pair of international friends from Russia and England, where they saw the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. They have also visited a Chinese opera and turned their cameras on the sights of this huge country.

The trio say they plan to explore more of the country during the winter break in January. Jones says that since being in China, they have still been able to celebrate some of the major American holidays such as Halloween, as well as Chavez’s birthday.

“Although China does not officially celebrate Christmas, we already have plans to do gift exchanges with some of our classmates on that day,” Jones says. All three say that study abroad offers opportunities that they could never have in the classroom, and encourage all students to apply. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, they say.

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The monster that STORY PACKAGE

BY

MALLORY MATT

DEWEYVILLE

SIBLINGS SANDBLAST BUSINESS DREAMS

The roar of a monster machine drowns out every other noise in the cluttered shop. A glass dish covered in masking tape and yellow stencil, with the name “Hope” cut out, goes into the Shannon Carroll, right, shows off a finished piece and a stenciled glass soon to be sandblasted.

Shannon, above, inspects her newest piece before removing the tape and stencil, while her brother Stephen Womack, far right, ‘frosts’ the glass in his sandblasting cabinet.

mouth of the beast before being spit out, having been blasted with sand.

For Deweyville siblings, Shannon Carroll and Stephen Womack, sandblasting is not only

a way to keep busy during their retirement, but it makes money, too.

“It all started when I wanted a wooden, decorative charging station for all of our electronics,” Shannon, a Lamar graduate, says. “I pitched my idea to my brother here, the woodworker, and then he said that we could make money selling this stuff. Then he gets my husband involved — and he’s an easy sell.

“I started this because I wanted to have something to do when I retired, and I was really hoping to recuperate my investment before I retire in December of 2015.”

Shannon works as an administrative coordinator for University of Texas Medical BranchGalveston.

Stephen, a retired electrician, said he uses the projects to keep busy.

“I have come up with all kinds of ideas,” he said. “Just sitting around, thinking up things to do — it can be a dangerous thing.”

Sandblasting is used mostly for car bodywork, so it took some time to successfully sandblast on glass, Stephen says.

“I’ve done sandblasting before, but nothing like this — I’ve sandblasted on vehicles,” he says. “You’re working with high-pressure sand.

You have a big air compressor and you have what they call ‘the pot,’ where all the sand goes in. The sand gets blasted through the

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imprints ‘Hope’ hose I use that is powered by the air compressor.

“It’s like sandpaper without the paper. The piece that is blasted feels gritty afterwards because the sand has cut into the glass. It will never wear off. It’s carved into the glass.”

Blasting doesn’t take long. If there’s enough pressure on the glass for too long, it’s possible to blow a hole through it or shatter it, Stephen says.

“When you’re just ‘frosting’ the outside, you don’t have to cut it really deep,” he says. “It only takes about 10 seconds. I’ll have a stencil taped on the glass and I’ll have a little pedal that I step on. I’ll have my hands in rubber gloves that I stick inside of the cabinet and I’ll have the hose in my right hand. I’ll push my foot on the pedal and I’ll just run the hose over the glass about three times and it’s done.”

Shannon says that the whole process is still very new to her.

“I’m still kind of feeling my way to figure out how much it costs me to do things,” she says. “We started on this several months ago and we had a lot of trial and error, so there’s a lot of expense related with that.”

“I think it was worth it,” Stephen says. “I think we’ll get our money’s worth.”

Shannon says the pair have sold enough items so far to recuperate about $1,000 of their investment, and the business hasn’t even really started yet.

“In January, I will have a website,” Shannon says. “I have an idea of how I want to get it set up, but I’m really glad that we took these months to practice. Right now, we’re just building our inventory. Our name is Artistic Gift Solutions.”

Stephen says the company does custom work, as well as original designs.

“Anything you want, like for weddings or birthdays or anything like that — we can do it,” he says. “It doesn’t take long and it’s not difficult.”

Sandblasting can be done on wood, metal, glass, acrylic and stone.

“We’ve really perfected glasses — we’re getting better and better,” Shannon says. “We’ve done other things, too, like someone wanted us to make a plaque made of glass and we did that on a picture frame because that’s how they wanted it. We put something behind it to make the words stand out and it was like a ‘Thank-you’ gift, where there were a lot of people’s names on it.

“Something like that takes me a lot of time so I charge more for that. Something like a reg-

ular drinking glass doesn’t take a lot of time and the glass isn’t really expensive, so we’d sell that for $10. The bigger the glass, the more expensive it is.”

The pair say they found good glasses to use at Walgreens.

“It was hard to find those quality of glasses for under $1,” Shannon says. “It got to where we were buying so many at this one particular Walgreens that as soon as they’d put them on the shelf, we’d buy them out. Then the next time we’d go in, they’d raise the price.”

“They just saw her come and they’d go, ‘Oh, look here comes that lady. We’d better go raise the price,’” Stephen says.

“They kept going steadily up and we were getting more and more orders,” Shannon says.

“I knew I had to find some sort of wholesaler. I went online, found a restaurant supplier and so I just started ordering from there.”

Glasses are easy to find but stencils are much more difficult, Shannon says.

“To make stencils, I Google whatever it is that you want,” she says. “Like there was a guy who wanted a moose, so then I looked up free clipart for moose. A moose is the ugliest animal, so I just did a silhouette stencil where you can see the whole body on the glass.

“For a very detailed stencil, like one of the glasses that has an owl, it takes me a while to pick all of the stencil pieces off of the feathers

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in the wings and the eyes, and things like that. The pieces are so small.”

Shannon uses a stencil-cutter to cut out the artwork.

“I’ll take the artwork that you want and put it on the matte, which is just a grid on my computer program,” she says. “It’s in increments of an inch, so what I usually do is measure my surface. I’ll take a ruler and I’ll measure it to make sure that the image will be ‘viewable,’ as in we can see the whole picture without having to turn the glass. All of the clear pieces in the stencil will be blasted. It will have that ‘frosted’ look.

“With the owl, I’ve picked the eyes out of the stencil so that the pupils will be ‘frosted.’

After I put the moose on the matte, or the grid, that’s when I’ll add whatever else you want like writing or numbers. I’ll just layer it and I’ll use whatever font you want. There’s a way in this computer program where you can group it all together and then the stencil-cutter cuts it out for you. It will cut very fine detail.”

After selecting the artwork and putting it through the stencil-cutter, the stencil is still a solid yellow piece.

“You have to pick out all of the little pieces that create the shape you want,” Shannon See SANDBLAST, page 23

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SUGAR Continued from page 13 “So, when you eat sugar, and you get this insulin response, then the sugar and the amino acids that compete with triptofan get into the body at a higher rate,” she said. “ And triptofan has less competition to get into the brain.”

When this happens, one produces more serotonin, which is why people with depression tend to be more drawn to sugar, because it makes one feel good, Ruiz said.

There has also been some research about emotional eating. Emotional eaters tend to have more carbohydrate cravings. If an emotional eater, for example, picks up a snickers bar at a difficult time, this may result in a binge, or an increased intake of sugary things that may last for a couple days or weeks, until one consciously decides “no more.’’

“Everybody likes to feel good,” she said.

“And, food makes us feel good, so we are drawn to sugar. It may taste good, and makes us feel happy because of the increase of serotonin in the brain, so from that standpoint, yes, you could say that sugar can be addictive, and there is no doubt that Americans as a population eat more sugar than what’s healthy.”

Ruiz said that the World Health Organization recommends that no more than 10 percent of one’s calories come from simple sugars. This equals an amount of 50 grams in a 2,000 calorie-a-day diet.

“That’s simple sugar, not counting all carbohydrates,” she said. “The last I saw in a recent textbook, is that Americans are getting about 24 percent of calories from sugar, almost 120 grams.”

Ruiz said that the food industry is in business to make money by providing foods that people will buy.

“In a free country, what are you going to do about it, apart from require the information to be on labels?” she said. “I think that it’s personal responsibility. It would be great if the food industry would work on making good tasting foods without having to add sugars.”

Artificial sugars could help with this, Ruiz said.

“I think that alternative sweeteners have received a really bad reputation,” she said.

“When you Google aspartame, all kinds of things come up. If you look at scientific literature, no studies have shown that aspartame or saccharine are that bad. People should look at alternative sweeteners more.”

When it comes to weight-management, simply cutting out sugar isn’t the solution, Ruiz said. It’s a complicated process and it’s not just one component.

“It seems that over the years, we’ll have a time where fat is bad, then sugar is bad, and then people say calories don’t count,” she said.

“Come on, that’s ridiculous. It all goes back to

80%

of processed food has added sugar

10%

of calories (= 50 grams of sugar) recommended daily

24%

of daily calorie intake in American diet from sugar

Source: World Health Organization

calories.”

Ruiz said she believes that there is more to obesity than just an increased sugar intake.

“We can’t blame just an overabundance of highly palatable food and under-activity,” she said.

According to the World Health Organization, obesity was once considered a high-income country problem. This has recently changed.

Overweight and obesity are now on the rise in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings.

This phenomenon can also be seen within a country, Ruiz said.

“When I was growing up, in the 1950s, I thought that people who kept Coca Cola in their house were rich,” she said. “Now, research shows that obesity is concentrated in lowincome and ethnic minorities. If you have a low income, you may want to make meals at home, but you may not have all the ingredients in your

pantry that you need at the same time. And you don’t have enough money to make a trip to the grocery store, but a trip to a fast-food place on a day where they are having a special, you can afford that.

“So, I think that is a contributor in lowincome population, and off course, mothers being employed, not having the time to cook a fresh meal.”

Sugar is an important factor to keep an eye on when trying to have a balanced diet. It can be addictive, and it’s hiding in so many more food products that we are aware of.

But whether it’s the key to solving America’s obesity problem? Probably not.

It is important that people are more aware of what they consume on a daily basis. Nowadays, this has become a lot easier due to mandatory labels on all food items.

The labels are there for a reason — don’t be too afraid to read them.

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CHALLENGE Continued from page 12 edly have added sugar when one really starts paying attention to labels.

Going in to this challenge, I knew what my biggest issues would be — breakfast and late afternoon snacks. I usually start my day with either cereal, a chocolate granola, which contains 19 grams of sugar for 2/3 cup, or one or two slices of toast with either orange marmalade — 14 grams of sugar for one tablespoon — or with chocolate —12 grams of sugar for 25 grams of chocolate.

A few times a week I’ll have an ice coffee while I’m at work. I don’t even want to think about the amount of sugar in a caramel ice coffee, but for the love of the written word, I looked it up and found that a medium-sized drink has 20 grams of sugar. Depressing.

Luckily, I enjoy cooking, and make most of my regular lunch and dinner meals from fresh ingredients, so I didn’t have to worry about those too much.

On the other hand, in the late afternoon, I usually have a snack. This consists of either a yogurt or granola bar. This doesn’t sound too bad on paper, but my favorite lemon yogurt has,

SANDBLAST Continued from page 21 says. “It’s called ‘weeding.’”

“Yeah, it’s called ‘weeding,’ but I call it a pain in my butt,” Stephen says. “It’s intricate work.”

Shannon says that once you weed it all out and they go through the process of putting it on the surface, the pair mask it in so that they don’t get scratches. If it’s not super detailed art work, that can be the longest part of the process.

“Masking is the big pain sometimes,” Stephen says. “You have to cover every piece of the glass with the masking tape that you don’t want frosted. I’ve gotten good enough that when I’m doing glasses, it doesn’t take me long.”

Sandblasting can be expensive, Shannon says.

“I kind of jumped into it without investigating how much it really costs,” she says.

“I’m not so sure, had I investigated more thoroughly, that I would’ve done it, but once you buy the blasting cabinet and the pieces, you have to continue.”

The compressor alone cost $600 and Shannon spent another $100 on grit.

“I was just too far in to turn back,” she says. “It was probably about $4,000, not counting supplies — just the equipment.”

believe it or not, more sugar, with 30 grams, than the ice coffee.

So, on days where I have cereal, Starbucks and yogurt, I’m clearly consuming more than the recommended 50 grams of sugar a day.

The first couple of days of the challenge were definitely the worst. I felt like all I could have for breakfast were eggs. For ten days I had either eggs with avocado, or rice for breakfast. That’s just not a very exciting way to start the day. So yes, it was difficult.

For an afternoon snack I opted for fruit, the only form of sweetness that I was allowed to have. That wasn’t too bad.

What amazed me was how often I was offered something that had sugar in it during the challenge. Coworkers would offer me banana bread, friends would ask if I wanted a cookie, or dessert. On any other week, I would accept the offer or friendly decline — OK, to be fair, most of the time I would accept. But whenever I do decline something sweet on a regular week, that would be the end of it. During the challenge it would bother me that I’d have to say no. Why were all these people offering me sweet things?!

Didn’t they know any better? Like a junkie, my sugar withdraws were kicking in. Without my daily intake of sugar I was a little bit grumpy.

Although for the first couple of days I had cravings for things like a little piece of chocolate

The compressor has to be big enough to hold all of the pressure, Stephen says.

“For this, you have to get one that will constantly put out enough pressure,” he says.

“We bought the air compressor just for this, which is where a lot of the cost comes in.”

The blasting cabinet came as a kit, with the pot and the hose and the pedal.

Shannon says that starting the business has been a fun challenge.

“I like doing it,” she says. “I had a rough start. To get six glasses that were usable, I probably had to cut ten stencils. If you mess up just one thing, you have to start over.

When you get to the fine details, like the owl’s eyes, because they’re so small, what I was finding was that I wasn’t using the right tools and it was pulling the entire eye out.”

“But once you figure out the right tools for the job, it makes it easier,” Stephen says.

The brother and sister work tediously to remove the yellow tape from the freshly sandblasted dish. In frosted words, the name “Hope” appears on the glass, a gift for a family member.

“This is one of my favorites,” Shannon says. “I really hope she likes it.”

Shannon holds her new creation to the light and inspects the frosted glass.

Stephen feeds the next glass into the belly of the beast. He flips the switch and presses his foot against the pedal and the beast is alive. The roar of the monster fills the cluttered workshop again.

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after dinner or a diet Coke, those faded away quite fast.

One day, towards the end of my first sugarfree week, I was having dinner at a friend’s place.

She had baked a delicious looking chocolate cake. While my friends munched on the cake, I sipped on a glass of water.

I would have never said no to the cake if I was not doing this challenge, but somehow saying no didn’t bother me that much. If I would have had to say no to the cake on the first day, I think it would have been a lot harder.

I guess this does prove that sugar is addictive. In the end, it’s all about eating habits. If you’re used to saying yes, it will be hard to say no. But after saying no to sugar all week, it became a lot easier.

I have eaten sugary things since I completed the challenge (which is clearly portrayed in the self portrait at the beginning of this column) but I do think I’ll keep an eye on sugar levels in the foods I consume.

And in case you’re wondering if I lost a bunch of weight from cutting sugar out of my diet, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I barely lost two pounds. I don’t think simply cutting out sugar is the answer to world’s obesity problems. It will take a balanced diet combined with an active lifestyle, but limiting sugar intake isn’t a bad place to start.

Stephen Womack uses the sandblasting cabinet in his shop to ‘engrave’ glass for Artistic Gift Solutions.

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Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement

Faculty Development at Lamar University

What is CTLE? TEACHING

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