Thursday, March 2, 2017 | Volume 212 | Number 113 | 40 cents | iowastatedaily.com | An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
ESCAPING TO SAFETY
Chris Jorgensen/Iowa State Daily
Quean Smith ran track, played football and baseball and wrestled at his high school in Detroit. Now he’s a Division I wrestler at Iowa State, something he never thought would be possible.
Quean Smith shouldn’t have made it out of Detroit. Now he’s a success story. By Ben.Visser @iowastatedaily.com Former Iowa State wrestling coach Kevin Jackson sent a text to each one of his newcomers when they first arrived to campus. He asked how they liked Iowa State and how they were adjusting. Most of the time the responses he received were something along the lines of, “I like it, I like Iowa State.” Or: “It feels like home.” Earl Hall, a Florida native, said he loved Iowa State even though he initially felt a little out of place. But he attributed that to being far away from home. Quean Smith’s — pronounced KEYon — response was much different. “I feel safe.” “I had never heard that before,” Jackson said. “You feel safe? I’ve never heard a student-athlete come on campus and ask them how they feel and
they say they feel safe.” Quean had a good reason for that response. In Ames, Quean could get on a bus and not have to worry if that was his last time. He could go into a gas station and not worry about it being shot up. “Growing up, I never felt safe,” Quean said. “There were all types of stuff going on — killings, robbings. It was terrifying. I couldn’t even walk down my own block without worrying about, ‘Is today my last day?’ “Then, when I came to Iowa State — at first I was still looking behind myself checking to see if someone was behind me. But then after awhile I’m like, ‘There’s nobody there to get me.’ I felt safe.” No more teachers, no more school Quean grew up in Detroit and went to school in Highland Park — a suburb just north of Detroit. The only problem was there was no school. There was a building, but it had no
teachers. There were students, but they had no principal. “By the time I got to 10th grade, my whole school was taken over by gangs,” Quean said. Every time a new teacher came in, the gangs beat them up. The school had a new principal every single year Quean was there because the gangs ran them out. The teachers were terrified to teach at a school where they couldn’t walk down the hallway because there was a gang on one side of the wall and a gang on the other side. And if they walked down that line, something was going to happen. “Every day we either had a bomb threat or a riot or EMS come in because someone got beat up,” Quean said. The school had metal detectors, but they didn’t work, so students started bringing guns to school. Quean had three stable teachers from his freshman to his senior year. He didn’t take four classes in a year
until his senior year. In between the classes Quean did have, he either sat in a classroom with one of the stable teachers, went to the wrestling room or went to the cafeteria. He tried to stay away from the gangs. But that didn’t mean the thought never crept into his head. Introduction to athletics Quean’s mom, Florence Vanhorn, ran track for a junior college before she blew out her knee. She introduced Quean to athletics. He started playing baseball, but soon after, his mom started coaching him to be a runner. Quean, who was 5-foot-10 and 250 pounds in high school, had a perfect frame to be a thrower. “I didn’t want to do that,” Quean said. “They put me against another big guy [in a race], and he was pretty fast, and they were like, ‘If you beat him,
SAFE p6
Seeking more reliability, ISU Professor: Trump’s breaks up with Blackboard speech pivot toward being presidential
By Alli.Weaver @iowastatedaily.com Have you ever been awake late at night, finishing homework that’s due tomorrow, only to find that Blackboard is down when you attempt to submit it?The Center of Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) have plans to improve students’ experiences. During Wednesday’s Student Government meeting, Ann Marie VanDerZanden, director of CELT, shared plans to switch from Blackboard Learn to Blackboard Ultra by spring 2018. The university’s Learning Management Systems (LMS) license with Blackboard Learn is coming to an end, so CELT and the Office of CIO found it necessary to replace it and preferably to improve it. After reviewing many options, Blackboard Ultra is currently the top choice, VanDerZanden said. Other universities, specifically the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa, have also been implementing new programs, and their experiences have been taken into account. The change in LMS is intended to improve student and professor experience, VanDerZanden said. “Blackboard Ultra has a very different look and feel than the current Blackboard,” she said. Along with the visual aspects, other considered factors include mobile app abilities, ease of instructor use and overall accessibility, VanDerZanden said. CELT also supports the idea that “change provides opportunity.” The organization urges instructors to consider accessibility, course updates and other ways to make course content improvements along with the LMS change. IT, CELT, college staff and select professors will be introduced to the new program in July 2017, giv-
By Chris.Anderson and Danielle.Gehr @iowastatedaily.com
Max Goldberg/Iowa State Daily
Vice President Cody West asks a question to Ann Marie VanDerZanden, who spoke to Student Government on Wednesday about the upcoming end of Blackboard Learn.
ing instructors a chance to become familiar and to integrate their courses before student rollout. Though the official rollout of Blackboard Ultra will be in spring 2018, some instructors will participate in early rollout of the new LMS in fall 2017. VanDerZanden said early rollout is intended not to be a pilot to explore possibilities, but to slowly integrate the program into student and professor interaction. Throughout the integration process, CELT plans to have an active support team for new instructors in order to create an ease of usage and transition. The subsidization of graduate prep courses also was discussed during the meeting. Many students pursuing graduate school have difficulties preparing for examinations, Sen. Danielle Nygard, proposer of the bill, said. Through the Princeton Review, the Student Government proposed to implement preparatory online courses for GRE, GMAT and LSAT at a portion of the price. “When students have more opportunities, it allows them to do
more things and be the best that they can be,” Sen. Cody Woodruff said. This bill was passed at 26-0-1, giving $150 per student enrolled in the Princeton Review’s preparatory courses in fall 2017. For that semester, the Student Government will present up to $37,500 total on a first-come, first-serve basis. Orders that were passed • Confirmation of Monica Pietig, Ashley Dvorsky and Nicholas Holaday to StuGov Supreme Court • Funding Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow • Funding ISU Trap and Skeet Club Approving the 2017-18 Election Apportionments • Additional Clause to the Events Committee, stating that the president can determine whether an events committee is necessary for a given year • Funding Iranian Students and Scholars Association • StuGov President Cole Staudt to attend a meeting at the Capitol on Tuesday to continue discussion of the medical amnesty bill, with intent to move it out of Senate by March 31.
Iowa State political science professors Steffen Schmidt and Dirk Deam weighed in on how they thought President Donald Trump fared in addressing congress for the first time. Deam and Schmidt drew comparisons to past presidents’ first addresses to Congress as well as the change in tone from the start of Trump’s campaign to now. Schmidt believes Trump did considerably well compared to other presidents and by criteria of what kind of speech is expected from a Republican president. “The speech was very good and on a mainstream conservative GOP standard. He delivered it very well,” Schmidt said. Schmidt believes the speech was the beginning of a pivot to being “presidential” by Trump. One of Trump’s main focuses was military spending, saying he plans to provide “a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” Deam said that it’s hard for him to see why the budget has to increase. “The last time the budget was this high was with Reagan, and that blew a hole in the budget,” Deam said. “There were more negative consequences.” Trump’s reference to the widow of a fallen soldier during his speech was seen as a misstep to Schmidt. “I did find it too much to ‘use’ the widow of the fallen soldier as a prop,” Schmidt said. “It lasted too long and it was tasteless of Trump to point that the soldier was looking down from heaven
and liking what he saw.” Trump also made a point to mention that the 250th anniversary of the United States is nine years away. This event may not seem applicable, but Trump used it to mark the end of his possible eight years in office, asking what the country will look like at this time. Deam said that this was a classic tactic used by presidents before Trump. “That’s a common way of opening up hope and creating urgency,” Deam said. “The idea of holding out for some goal or something that we’re trying to reach is common.” He compared it to former President John F. Kennedy’s goal of putting an American astronaut on the moon. Deam said that Kennedy created this urgency by making Americans feel that this goal wasn’t too far from being achieved, but wasn’t too close. Another thing Schmidt noted was the improvement of staying on message by Trump, as opposed to what was seen on the campaign trail. The key to Trump following through with the presidential momentum that his speech generated is to fill his rhetoric with more policy, which it is currently lacking, Schmidt said. “He needs to follow this with less tweeting or more policy-oriented tweeting,” Schmidt said. “He also needs to now fill in the details of how he will accomplish the goals he has for the economy, jobs, taxes and foreign policy.” In his address, Trump focused on the “softening of both sides,”mostly in relation to his immigration travel ban. He largely discussed tax reform, Obamacare, his recent immigration ban, and his proposed wall along the U.S. southern border.