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Cl ub s er ves vege t ar i an meal s f or s tuden ts on a budge t p6
Students use provocative attire to protest cuts to Planned Parenthood p4
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Independent Student Newspaper for the University of Texas at San Antonio
{SINCE 1981}
UTSA
Volume 48
April 2, 2013
Issue 10
{WWW.PAISANO-ONLINE.COM}
The White Rabbit hosts Art Slam: Return of the Cult Classics
Alexis Harris, a junior anthropology major, has been selected to be the next Cover Girl.
Janae Rice/The Paisano
San Antonio Devin Brown, the only UTSA basketball player to play in the NBA and a former Spur, was arrested last week on charges of DWI.
Research conducted by UTSA’s Institute of Economic Development found that development of the Eagle Ford Shale region contributed $61 billion and 116,000 jobs to the South Texas economy in 2012, compared to $25 billion and 117,000 jobs in 2011.
UT System An ammendment to the Texas budget prefiled by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts (RWaxahachie)would severly limit the powers of the Board of Regents, whom Pitts accused of being on a “witch hunt” against Bill Powers, President of UT-Austin.
History This week in 1996, UTSA students first gained access to an online encyclopedia when the university subscribed to a text-only version of Britannica Online.
President Romo wins award Supreme Court hears same-sex marriage cases for work in higher education J. Corey Franco
Julia Brouillette Staff Writer
news@paisano-online.com UTSA President Ricardo Romo was presented with the prestigious Clark Kerr Award for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education from the University of California, Berkeley, March 14, at the Berkeley campus. The Clark Kerr Award was created in 1968 to honor the legacy of Clark Kerr, University of California system president emeritus . Each year, the award is given to an individual who has made exceptional contributions to the advancement of higher education. Romo was lauded for his role in helping to improve recently founded American universities, primarily those centered in minority communities. Romo has served UTSA as president for 13 years, and in that time, UTSA has transformed from a mainly undergraduate institution to a large, highly acclaimed general campus with nationally recognized doctoral and professional programs. Over the years, the reshaping of UTSA’s main campus has included a renovated library, doubling of dorm space and expansion of the Recreation and Wellness Center, along with various other significant improvements. “Amenities for students are very important,” Romo said. “Fortunately for us, we had a
news@paisano-online.com
The UTSA baseball team will play at Seattle University April 5-7. Softball will play Utah State in Logan, Utah April 6 and 7.
UTSA is on the fast track to reaching Tier One status. “Now, UTSA is one of the top schools in the world among the universities that are 50 years old and younger. Tier One is exactly that. Tier One is a nationally recognized campus.” However, Romo stated, “We continuously need to climb, we’re not at the top of the ladder. We may be midway, but we need to think in terms of improvement.” According to Romo, taking the next steps for UTSA could mean adding Doctoral programs, more dorms or more buildings. “In a campus that grows as rapidly as we do, there’s always going to be ‘not enough.’ Overall, our mission is to improve quality and to strive for excellence,” Romo stated.
President Ricardo Romo speaks at UTSA’s Great Conversations event last month.
Texas lawmakers boost state spending Associated Press
Sports
News Assistant
lot of support from students. Students were making things happen, like the Recreation and Wellness Center—that was a student idea.” Development of the university coincided with the soaring student population. Almost 30,000 students are currently enrolled at UTSA, approximately 5,000 of whom are graduate students and 1,800 are international students. The culture has changed dramatically, with thousands more students living, eating and studying on campus. Academically, UTSA has seen some major growth as well. “We went from four colleges to nine. We created five additional colleges so that we could meet the academic interests of the students.” Romo continued, “We also put more emphasis on expanding graduate programs.” Due to these advancements,
Will Tallent/The Paisano
Texas
See paisano-online.com for more photos.
The Texas Legislature may not be spending quite like a drunken sailor, but lawmakers have certainly got the checkbook out as they work on the next state budget. Following the Great Recession, lawmakers slashed spending in 2011 for schools, health care and just about everywhere else. The cupboard is full this year with the comptroller predicting the state will raise $101.3 billion, and the Republican-
controlled Legislature is spending almost every dime available without busting the constitutional spending limit. This week the Texas House is expected to pass the latest version of the next two-year budget, which will come in at about $93.5 billion–a more than 15 percent jump above the budget signed by Gov. Rick Perry two years ago . The extra dollars this time around were made possible by a thriving oil and gas industry and a recovering economy. And yet after six years of budget cuts, many say Texas needs to spend even more.
The left-leaning Center for Public Policy Priorities estimates that just to maintain the current level of government services would cost $97 billion, because of population growth and inflation. The budget that the Texas House of Representatives will debate on Thursday also fails to restore all of the $5.4 billion the Legislature cut from public schools in 2011. The bottom line, there is something for everyone to hate in the proposed budget. Conservatives will decry the increase See BUDGET, Page 3
news@paisano-online.com SCOTUS legal review on same-sex marriage hearings Last December, the Supreme Court decided it would include two cases on the 2013 docket that would have major implications on the status of same-sex marriage in the United States. The cases chosen—United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry—challenge the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8, respectively. DOMA is a federal law passed in 1996 which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Proposition 8 is a California law which precludes same-sex marriages. According to the Petition for Writ of Certiorari, the formal request calling for a Supreme Court review, the Hollingsworth v. Perry case poses the question of “whether the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the State of California from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” Similarly, the petition in United States v. Windsor asks “whether section 3 of DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons of the same sex who are legally married under the laws of their state.” The hearings began on March 26 for Hollingsworth v. Perry and on March 27 for the United States v. Windsor case. Fifty-eight percent of Americans think it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted this month. Among younger Americans—those ages 18-29—81 percent say they support gay marriage, according to the poll. Reuters Ltd., a British news agency, reported that, “Chief Justice John Roberts alluded to the evolving positions on the issue during oral arguments on Wednesday in one of the cases, citing political support for same-sex marriage as evidence that gays and lesbians were not a vulnerable group requiring special protections.” “As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case,” Roberts said to Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer representing Edith Windsor, a lesbian widow
seeking federal benefits in one of the cases. Charles Cooper presented the argument on behalf of California. “The concern is that redefining marriage as a genderless institution will sever its abiding connection to its historic traditional procreative purposes, and it will refocus—refocus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults,” Cooper said. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that “somebody who is locked up in prison and who is not going to get out has a right to marry, has a fundamental right to marry, no possibility of procreation (so why not gay couples)?” Justice Ginsburg also stated in the United States v. Windsor hearing that DOMA, by denying same-sex couples federal benefits, reduces same-sex marriage to a “sort of skim milk marriage.” Although the justices appeared likely to strike down the same-sex marriage bans, Reuters reported that “based on the arguments, however, a partial victory for gay rights activists seems more likely than the sweeping declaration of samesex marriage rights they had hoped for.” The report notes that while justices have expressed that they are not interested in impeding the states from embracing same-sex marriage, they have also made it clear that they will not be paving the way to marriage equality. If the justices decide to strike down DOMA, legally married same-sex couples would become eligible for federal benefits that were previously denied. This denial of benefits is what required Edith Windsor to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes, which would not have been imposed if Windsor’s marriage had been federally recognized. According to Reuters, “Justices gave a strong indication they might resolve the Proposition 8 case on procedural grounds.” If this happens, samesex marriages would likely resume in California. This ruling’s procedural grounds would have no effect on the marriage laws of any other state. While none of the justices definitively said how they planned to rule, Politico reported that if the court issues an opinion in the case, it likely would not come before June.