The Battalion: February 13, 2017

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2017 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2017 STUDENT MEDIA | @THEBATTONLINE

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Yuri Suchil — THE BATTALION

The Aggies outscored their opponents 22-9 in the first weekend back on the diamond.

After addressing the community, Imam Islam took the time to individually speak to anyone who had questions.

Morgan Engel — THE BATTALION

A&M goes 4-0 to open 2017 season

By Angel Franco @angelmadison_

F

ollowing a thrilling 2-1 comeback win to defeat Lamar on Friday, No. 18 Texas A&M kept the offense going the remainder of the weekend, finishing undefeated to start the softball season.

The first game provided a roller coaster of emotions as the nationally ranked A&M was down to Lamar for the majority if the game.

Junior outfielder Erica Russell made what Texas A&M head coach Jo Evans called a game-saving play in the top of the fifth inning to stop Lamar’s offensive attack.

“I really believe that if she doesn’t make that catch, we don’t win the game, that was a phenomenal catch out there,” Evans said.

A&M mounted a successful comeback in the sixth inning that allowed them to escape the upset. Sophomore pitcher Samantha Show delivered the game winning hit to give the Aggies the lead.

On day two of the Aggie Classic, Texas A&M played its first doubleheader of the season against Central Michigan and Ohio State.

Game one of the day resulted in four lead changes between the Aggies and Central Michigan. It all began when A&M jumped to an early 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning. However, The Chippewas would respond on the top of the third inning with a three-run homerun from shortstop Morgan Gardner to take the lead. The Aggies were able to capitalize on a throwing error by Central Michigan to tie the game at three apiece in the bottom half of the inning.

A&M took the lead in the bottom of the third and held it for an inning before CMU once again reclaimed it. After managing to tie the game once again, A&M entered into the bottom of the sixth with intentions to claim the lead. Junior catcher Ashley Walters delivered a crucial three-RBI double which would be the difference down the stretch.

Show earned her second win of the season after entering the game in relief of freshman Payton McBride, striking out five batters and allowing a single hit.

The Aggie offense exploded in the second game of the day against SOFTBALL ON PG. 4

Aggies Got Talent Akh Mastani, an Indian culture dance team, rocks the stage with their first-place performance. The Student Government Association, which hosts the event, held the third annual Aggies Got Talent show Saturday night.

FILE

After the events of Feb. 9, the community held the protest “February 9 is Everyday” last Spring.

STORY AT THEBATT.COM Hanna Hausman — THE BATTALION

One year after Feb. 9 incident students reflect Racist action has led to campus conversation, diversity awareness

By Chevall Pryce @ChevallP Just over a year ago, more than 60 students from Uplift Hampton Preparatory were touring the Texas A&M campus when they received a welcome more hostile than they anticipated from a student. The student reportedly verbally abused the tour group, targeting their race and skin color and told them to “Go back where [they] came from” while using the n-word, her confederate flag earrings acting as a prop.

That day, Feb. 9, 2016, would go on to be a talking point and reference for the next full year on campus. Dozens of protests can be traced back to the event and, while the university apologized to Uplift Hampton Preparatory students in the form of letters written by students, it also initiated actions and discussions to prevent future incidents.

Lectures, campus visitors and other diversity-oriented events — both university organized and otherwise — have become common place on campus in an effort to increase diversity awareness.

While the event was a disappointment to both A&M and Uplift Hampton Preparatory, the schools are moving forward. Sara Ortega, director of communications for Uplift Education, said the school is trying to look past the mistreatment of their students and FEB. 9 ON PG. 2

Muslim community hosts ‘Meet Your Muslim Neighbors’

By Ana Sevilla @AnaVSevilla Hundreds of patrons from various religious and ethnic backgrounds filled the Islamic Center of Bryan-College Station Saturday, all sharing one common goal: To get to know one another.

The ICBCS hosted their first Meet Your Muslim Neighbors event to open their doors to the community to educate attendees on Islam.

Mosque leader Imam Islam and ICBCS president Anwer Ahmed led the event by hosting a Q&A session with the audience, with topics ranging from politics to basic Islamic beliefs.

Some questions were concerned with how to be a better ally to Muslims during the current political climate.

“Coming out to one another’s events I think is important. I think where we have common ground, we should talk about it and also be able to respectfully articulate our differences as well,” Islam said. “ For example, if a Muslim woman is wearing the headscarf, let them know it’s okay to wear the headscarf. We’re not looking for permission to practice our religion but words of encouragement or words of support, they do go a long way.”

Ahmed said taking the time to educate others can help create conversations, too.

“One other thing that I think could help us a lot is clearing up misconceptions about Islam,” Ahmed said.“Whoever you interact with, whenever you have the appropriate opportunity, just say ‘Hey [Muslims] are regular people like us.

They’re believers in God like us.’ Clarifying misconceptions and moving away from this notion that Muslims are radical will help a lot … We all NEIGHBOR ON PG. 3

University incorporates new Cultural Discourse credit into Core Curriculum

By Tyler Snell @Tyler_Snell2

New changes in the university Core Curriculum will start in the fall of 2019, affecting freshman entering that fall. The International and Cultural Diversity (ICD) credit requirements are being revised to include a 3-hour Cultural Discourse (CD) credit in order to promote students’ international awareness.

“The ICD requirement would include a new set of well-defined goals aimed at expanding a student’s cultural or international awareness,” the Faculty Senate’s Core Curriculum Council said in a factsheet. “The new CD requirement is aimed at helping our students engage in difficult conversations related to topics such as gender, race, religion and politics.”

Currently, students are required to take six credit hours of ICD credits in order to graduate. The changes will require students only take three hours, but also take a three-hour Cultural Discourse credit.

This process began in 2014 and the first open forums for faculty and students took place in 2016.

Jan. 23 the Faculty Senate approved the changes put forth by the Faculty Senate’s Core Curriculum Council. Julie Harlin, co-chair of the Core Curriculum Council, said this process has been going on for the past two years.

“Since we recently revised the core curriculum, the Core Curriculum Council felt it was time to revisit this requirement as well,” Harlin said. “Once it has been approved by President Young, it will come back to the core curriculum council for implementation.”

Earlier this year, students from TAMU with faculty and administration about revising the DIVERSITY ON PG. 3

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The new addition to the Core Curriculum will affect freshman starting in fall of 2019 and each class afterward.

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“Everyday is February 9” was one of the protests held following the Feb. 9th incident where visiting high school students were accosted with racial slurs.

FEB. 9 CONTINUED took the incident as an opportunity to educate about racial issues in colleges.

“We tried to keep their focus on academics and not bother them too much,” Ortega said. “Following the couple of months after that happened, Uplift partnered with a whole bunch of different higher [education] institutions from across the state and nation. We had what was called The College Race, which was a symposium on racial issues in higher [education] and different areas that our students would possibly encounter.”

Several speakers at the event, including Paul Frazier, associate president for the institute of diversity at Texas Tech, Tracy Brown, president of International Inclusion Inc., Uplift Hampton Preparatory alumni and students from Texas Tech gave speeches and hosted workshops, panels and discussions centered around discrimination at The College Race’s inaugural event in Dallas last year.

Ortega said the event was important because the students will face discrimination once they leave high school.

“Unfortunately, these are just realities of their world,” Ortega said. “It is an unfortunate situation that our students have reflected on but in the end we came through with something that opened the dialogue for this conversation we needed to have.”

Ortega said Texas Tech has agreed to host the next College Race in March and will invite other universities and higher education entities.

At A&M, students continue to challenge the university through a series of demands. TAMU Anti-Racism,

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an organization which was created in direct response to the Feb. 9 incident, hosted #OurCampusTAMU on the anniversary. It consisted of different events highlighting specific demands from the group, including more students and faculty of color, addressment of allegedly racist faculty and more representation of people of color through statues and monuments. Twitter hashtags, protests, artwork and a march were meant to highlight each demand on a specific day last week leading up to the anniversary.

Chris Wise, women and gender studies senior and member of TAMU Anti-Racism, said the university has a long way to go before it can fix racial issues. Wise said Aggies United, a counter event held by the university the night white nationalist Richard Spencer came to speak on campus, emails sent from Young and statements from university were not productive. Aggies United was named the most inspirational event of 2016 by the Anti Defamation League.

“I feel like A&M never really addressed the student body on those issues,” Wise said. “As far as how this is an issue and we need to address it and we need to make sure our students of color especially feel welcome on campus and feel like they’re a part of the Aggie family also. I feel like most of it was done to save face … It’s meant to make white people feel better.”

One of the goals for TAMU Anti-Racism is to have more landmarks of students of color on campus, such as Matthew Gaines, who made contributions to public education in Texas including the founding of A&M. Wise said representation on campus of minorities is important for inclusion.

“Having something that represents me as a person, as a black woman, says I belong here too and that I’m a part of the Aggie family,” Wise said. “Sometimes we just don’t feel like we belong or we feel ‘othered’ in many other ways.”

Over the past year, University President Michael Young and A&M faculty have continually promised to improve the campus climate and diversity on campus, including denouncing the recent executive order to ban immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

“While the actions of a few certainly do not represent our institution as a whole, it is the responsibility of all of us to stop any incidents that could be considered hateful or biased-based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability or any other factor,”Young said in an email a day after the incident.

Shane Hinckley, vice president of brand development for Texas A&M, said the university recognizes the issues concerning race and representation and will not stop working to solve them. Hinckley said A&M is looking to expand the conversation and investigate ways to improve the university, including diversity training and more.

“We look at it as the beginning of going forward and doing more engagement, more speaking, more embracing of the conversation of the topic and working with various different groups both in implementing new structures and strategies,” Hinckley said. We’ll continue to do so. We’ll continue to promote and encourage those conversations because that’s the way you need to address it … This isn’t just one person from the office of the president. This is a community collaborative effort together. And that’s how you make it work.”

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DIVERSITY CONTINUED

Yuri Suchil — THE BATTALION

Meet your Muslim Neighbor, hosted by the ICBCS, worked to help clarify misconceptions regarding Muslims and the Islamic faith.

NEIGHBOR CONTINUED have to stand up for injustice against anybody.”

Nimrah Riaz, ICBCS Women’s social officer and second-year health education graduate student, said this event was inspired by the positive support received from the community.

“We all started getting messages after the executive orders started coming out, and we do have a lot of international students in our community,” Riaz said. “We got an overwhelming amount of messages, we had people drop off flowers at our front lobby, people signed cards and all kinds of stuff .”

Riaz said she knew that many residents had never been to a mosque, and some have never even met a Muslim, so creating an opportunity to do so was imperative.

International studies junior Dariela Teran said the event

made her happy to see people joining together to become familiar.

“I think that Christian organizations and interfaith organizations should interact more,” Teran said. “We should get to know each other on a more human level rather than a conceptualized ‘Muslim.’ Meet your neighbor — that’s something I want to see more of.”

As the event came to a close, Ahmed said the questions created productive conversation.

“We are very blessed to be here,” Ahmed said. “The people asked great questions, very thoughtful questions and they were genuinely interested in finding out — not just presuming that we’re guilty but rather interested in finding out what is the Islamic position on various aspects and topics.”

ICBCS will be hosting its annual Open House from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on April 1.

ICD credits and creating a mandatory diversity awareness course. TAMU Anti-Racism member and political science sophomore Margarita Zollo said the university examining its courses is what students wanted.

“This is all we really want — for A&M to take a more critical view of the classes we do have,” Zollo said. “It will definitely get people to talk about these issues, and hopefully this will be an intro to get people involved in issues that relate to diversity and inclusion.”

However, Zollo said some students are wary of the university not following through with its plan and merely discussing the issues.

“We’ve seen this before where a university declares some action is going to be done and when it gets to the end of the day there are no effects long term,” Zollo said. “There still is that anticipation of the university not holding themselves to the standards that they put out, but overall, we are feeling confident about this.”

Harlin said the Faculty Senate Core Curriculum Committee has met with various student groups and feels that a majority of classes already offered will meet the Cultural Discourse requirement.

“We have had widespread student support and have met with many groups of students across campus,” Harlin said. “We suspect that there are many courses already offered that meet the spirit of the Cultural Discourse requirement.”

Texas A&M offers 362 ICD credits, but the new plan requires these courses to meet new guidelines in an approval process proposed to the Faculty Senate.

“If a professor can make the case for how the course will allow dialogue on difficult topics, the course should be approved,” Harlin said. “We are not dictating specific content to be taught, and we hope that faculty propose courses on a wide range of topics as is currently the case for our ICD courses.”

Zollo said the addition of new ICD courses in previous years has caused this conversation to be a long time coming and is excited for what it could mean for students.

“I think a lot of people are going to be watching it, making sure it’s the best it can be,” Zollo said. “I hope for myself and others it will have the effect of getting people involved in different groups in the community and caring about these issues in the long run.”

Only freshmen entering Texas A&M in the fall of 2019 will be affected by the changes, and professors can request for their courses to be approved as ICD or CD requirements under the new plan.

“Texas A&M University, including its students, faculty, staff and administration, is strongly committed to diversity and to the need for courses that promote the understanding and acceptance of difference,” the Faculty Senate’s Core Curriculum Council said in a factsheet.

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WEEKEND

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OVER THE WEEKEND IN AGGIELAND

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1

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Photos by Hannah Hausman & Spencer Russo — THE BATTALION

1) Thousands of prospective students crowded Aggieland for Aggieland Saturday to get a feel for campus. 2) Sophomore cadet Cody Bliss helps show prospective Aggies around campus. 3) Children joyfully pet the lion costumes at a Chinese New Year celebration.

4) Economics senior Ruijing Liu and communication graduate student Yongrong Shen teach children how to paint Beijing Opera masks.

SOFTBALL CONTINUED Ohio State. After OSU took the 1-0 lead in the first inning in the bottom half, A&M tied the game up then later and tacked on another in the second. It was a five-run third inning that contributed to the Aggies eventual run rule victory over Ohio State.

Sunday marked the final day of the Aggie Classic with the second meeting between A&M and Lamar. Unlike game one, which was an offensive stalemate, game four of the weekend kicked off with an A&M score in the bottom of the first inning. Lamar responded in the second inning to tie the game up. Sophomore Kaitlyn Alderink delivered an RBI double to give the Aggies the 3-1 lead in the bottom half of the third inning.

Despite cutting A&M’s lead to one run in the sixth inning, Lamar was unable to find the bats needed to upset the Aggies.

Junior Trinity Harrington earned her first win of the season pitching six complete innings, allowing four hits on and two walks on her first outing of the season. Last year, Harrington dealt with a back injury that limited the amount of time she was able to pitch. However, following Sunday’s win, Harrington said she is healthy and going through rehab to help her stay in prime pitching.

“We’ve been working really hard with rehab in the training room to make sure I’m ready to go when they need me” Harrington said. “Which is great and I’ve been feeling a lot healthier at the start of this season which is so satisfying to be able to tell people that I’m feeling great now.”

Show came in to relieve Harrington and earned the save for the Aggies on Sunday. After the game, Show said she was

happy with the way the team performed but said there are a few things they can work on leading up to the next Wednesday’s matchup against Sam Houston State “I think it was a good start to our season,” Show said. “I’m excited to see where we take this weekend and all of our improvements this week in practice and move on.”

Evans said her team showed poise and experience this weekend in the different challenges they faced with each team they played.

“I am really happy that we are 4-0,” Evans said. “Any time you enter a tournament or a game, you expect to win. I am happy about winning this tournament. I was happy with our fight. It wasn’t easy. We got challenged. We had our backs against the wall, and I thought we did nice job handling that.

There was no panic or lack of confidence. We went out there and took care of business.”

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HAVE YOUR PICTURE TAKEN FOR THE 2017 AGGIELAND YEARBOOK! Specialties Photography will be set up to have your FREE portrait taken for Texas A&M University’s 2017 Aggieland yearbook.

LAST WEEK!

ALL CLASSES ARE WELCOMED 10 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Monday - Thursday Feb. 13th - 16th Located at the Sanders Corps Museum Library

Should any student be unable to make the specified times on campus they can contact Specialties directly to set up a complimentary in-studio appointment at 979-696-9898.

Any graduating seniors who wish to set up a cap/gown photo will need to contact the studio at 979-696-9898. Cap/Gown sessions cost $21.95.