TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2016 | SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 | © 2016 STUDENT MEDIA | @THEBATTONLINE
RELOCATION CAUSES FRUSTRATION PART 1 OF 2
BATT THE
Administrators, students weigh in on Student Services move from Cain Hall to White Creek By Matt Koper @mattkoper
S
THE BATTALION | THEBATT.COM
Despite the 2,705 new students who enrolled at A&M in fall 2015, Student Counseling Services had 144 fewer appointments than in fall 2014
Student Services at White Creek
In comparing data available from Student Counseling Services as of Sept 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2014 there were 8,527 appointments. When compared to the same timeframe in 2015 — Sept. 1, 2015 to Dec. 12, 2015 — there were 8,383 appointments.
Cain Garage
Memorial Student Center
Source: A&M Transportation Services Route 03 Olivia Adam — THE BATTALION
A&M Transportation Services route 03, Yell Leader, is the only bus route that takes students to White Creek — an approximately 10-minute ride from the Memorial Student Center according to the Transportation Services website. The Yell Leader route also stops at AP Beutel Health Center and the Wehner Building.
“The timing of the new construction project really bothers me — just in that I feel like students were not being put first. You know this a university first and foremost, not a business.” Kaitlyn Kellermeyer, senior, Disability Services user
FILE
The student services complex at White Creek consists of temporary modulars that house offices like Disability Services, Women’s Health Resource Center and Student Counseling Services.
THIS IS PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES: WEDNESDAY WILL HIGHLIGHT STUDENT-LED INITIATIVES TO COMBAT FRUSTRATION
ome students walking along the side of White Creek Apartments are residents of the apartment complex. Others, though, are Aggies who are visually impaired, victims of sexual assault, suffering from anxiety and depression or students struggling with other challenges seeking aid from Student counseling Services. But getting to the student services complex at White Creek is no easy feat for nearly 2,000 A&M students suffering from disabilities such as these. The construction alongside the temporary modulars that house these offices, in addition to incomplete sidewalks and inconvenient public transportation, has made it difficult or unsatisfactory for these students to get the help they need. Offices including Disability Services, Student Counseling Services and the Women’s Health Resource Center, among others were previously located in Cain Hall next to the Memorial Student Center. But when Cain Hall was demolished and replaced with Cain Garage — which opened Monday — some offices previously located in Cain Hall were moved across from White Creek Apartments on West Campus. The move of the services at Cain Hall for the construction of a hotel and conference center alongside a parking garage was initially proposed by former A&M president R. Bowen Loftin, and A&M System Chancellor John Sharp had been considering the project since Oct. of 2014 during a pre-proposal process, according to articles written by The Eagle and The Battalion. Following the Sept. 3, 2015 Board of Regents vote that approved the Cain Hall redevelopment project, the offices were given just over a month — Oct. 1 to Nov. 11 of 2015 — to be completely moved out of Cain Hall. Phillip Ray, vice chancellor of business affairs, said the location of Cain Hall is what drew university officials to replace it with a hotel and conference center and parking garage. “The value comes from the location of the ground — being adjacent to the MSC, being adjacent to Simpson Drill Field, being right there on Wellborn Road, being adjacent to Kyle Field and the parking garages and those type of things,” Ray said. Director of Residence Life Carol Binzer said the University’s decision to relocate the student services office also largely depended on finances. “It’s not an easy answer,” Binzer said. “When you get to the space wars and real estate — everything has different pots of money and so, there’s some of that. It’s probably easier to get money to build a parking garage and a hotel that will support the football revenue or guests coming to see football. It’s not very ‘sexy’ to build new offices for services.” Student senator Kyle Cox, who utilizes a wheelchair due to his Duchenne muscular dystrophy — a disorder that causes muscular weakness — uses Disability Services at White Creek to take tests, turn in paperwork and more. At one point, Cox had to go from his dorm at Hullabaloo Hall to the White Creek offices in his wheelchair because transportation options were unclear. “That was before I had a system and kind of got a feel for how I needed to get over there,” Cox said. “I didn’t plan for this. I mean it just kind of moved in the middle of the semester and I didn’t plan for this, so I didn’t know transportation.” Cox said he’s unhappy with how university administration handled the relocation of Disability Services. “I think the administration just kind of ignored the students and just focused all on money,” Cox said. “That’s just my opinion about it, so — they weren’t thinking what was in the best interest of these students. And now, it really upset a lot of A&M.” Cox isn’t the only student on campus who has claimed difficulty with accessing services necessary for his condition. Senior Kaitlyn Kellermeyer, who is visually impaired, said as a result of the sidewalks and curbs not being finished, she ended up walking in the road by White Creek at West Campus. “The curbs — actually I think all of the curbs — didn’t have any sort of indicator to let you know when you got into the street,” Kellermeyer said. “So I remember kind of trying to figure out how to cross that road and trying to figure out whether I was in the road, and I remember sometimes ending up in the median or walking down the road.” Freshman Rebecca Baumgarten, who has a visual impairment, said getting to White Creek includes walking to the MSC and then riding bus Route 3, the only bus route that goes out to White Creek, with two stops before reaching Disability Services. She also said she has encountered issues crossing the street and once had to have a bus driver walk her across the street the first time she visited the office. “You didn’t have to take a bus to Cain,” WHITE CREEK ON PG. 2
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“It’s probably easier to get money to build a parking garage and a hotel that will support the football revenue or guests coming to see football.” Carol Binzer, Director of Residence Life
BROADWAY’S BIGGEST SELLING
MAGIC SPECTACULAR “MAGIC’S CIRQUE DU SOLEIL”
Baumgarten said. “It’s a little hard to cross the street because with most street crossings it’s pretty straight-forward … But at that crossing there’s this weird median in the way. And if you can’t see that it’s a median, you just think you’re across the street — but you keep going and there’s more street.” Some students using the student services complex at White Creek are victims of sexual assault. Claire Shalkowski, English junior and sexual assault victim, said she wasn’t comfortable riding the bus to her appointments with her counselor at White Creek because of her assault. “I didn’t like riding the bus — I didn’t really like being around people in general, just because after what happened,” Shalkowski said. “Sometimes I feel like when people see you get off and walk across to SCS, you kind of get labeled in a way.” Tracey Calanog, the program director at the Brazos Valley Sexaul Assault Resource Center said public transportation could be traumatic for someone who is a victim of sexual violence. “We do know about PTSD and trauma and survivors — so, public transportation is absolutely a potential fear that develops as a result of trauma,” Calanog said. “Sexual assault, any type of violence and when people have PTSD of any kind — getting on public transportation can definitely have an impact on them.” Emily Thompson, a psychology senior who was sexually assaulted on campus, said she stopped going to student counseling after the relocation because she lived off campus. Instead, she transitioned from Cain Hall to SARC — the Brazos Valley Sexual Assault Resource Center — to get the help she needed. “So, I remember one of the first times I went [to White Creek], I struggled a little bit because on top of feeling self conscience about what I was doing, I was lost and I just was spinning my wheels thinking about getting frustrated about this, unnecessarily on top of everything else, thinking, ‘What am I doing, is it worth the hassle?’” Thompson said. “Which, for somebody who is struggling with getting through the day, that was unpleasant.” Thompson said she’s had to pay $50 for being late for her appointments twice — a $25 fee for being 15 minutes late. Thompson said she only had one of the late fees waived for her and has to pay $2 to park at White Creek now that she drives there, with no guarantee there are parking spots available. Alongside the charge for showing up late to appointments, Thompson said the buildings aren’t well marked. “When you’re walking towards the building, it becomes obvious which one you’re going to,” Thompson said. “There’s a ramp, there’s this expansive gravel — anybody there knows what you’re up to. And I think even today there’s a taboo around looking for help in terms of mental health.” According to a review done by the Texas Tribune, Texas A&M is understaffed and is one of the schools across the state that does not meet the standards of counselor-per -student ratio recommended by the International Association of Counseling Services
(IACS). The recommended ratio according to the IACS is one counselor per 1,000 to 1,500 students. Texas A&M falls under the ratio of 2,705 students per counselor — almost 1,700 more students than what is recommend. “With the number of students coming in and the severity of their conditions, yes, I could use more staff,” Maggie Gartner, director of the university’s counseling center told the Texas Tribune. “But even if I could hire 15 more counselors, there isn’t space for that.” Ground broke on the old Cain Hall site on Jan. 1, and according to multiple sources including Speaker of Student Senate Joseph Hood, Kellermeyer and others, the original plan included the new Student Services Complex to be constructed on the same lot as the hotel and conference center alongside the parking garage. But since then, the plan has changed to the demolition and reconstruction of the Bizzell building on main campus for the new student services building.The site originally planned for the student services complex will now be converted into classroom space. Ground will be broken on Bizzell in May of 2016, and the rough projection is the building will be finished in the fall of 2019, according to Vice President of Student Affairs Daniel Pugh. Pugh said what is replacing the old Cain Hall is more viable and will be worth it in the long run for students. “But, we’ll have a generation of students that seek services out there,” Pugh said in reference to students who will have come through Texas A&M using the offices out at White Creek. Heather Wheeler, the director of the Women’s Health Resource Center, said she suspects since her department is split between White Creek and Bizzell Hall — with Student Assistance Services on main campus and the Women’s Health Resource Center out at White Creek — fewer students are going over to West Campus than when the offices were in Cain Hall. “We do have less students out here and I suspect — and of course I cannot say definitively — but there’s generally less student traffic out here than we had in Cain,” Wheeler said. In comparing data available from Student Counseling Services as of Sept. 1, 2014 to Dec. 31, 2014 there were 8,527 appointments. When compared to the same time frame in 2015, there were 8,383 appointments. That’s a difference of 144 appointments since the services relocated to White Creek starting on Oct. 1, 2015 and ending Nov. 11, 2015. Kellermeyer said she believes the university has taken an interest in the Cain Hall redevelopment for business purposes and not for serving its students. “The timing of the new construction project really bothers me — just in that I feel like students were not being put first,” Kellermeyer said. “You know this a university first and foremost, not a business. I understand why they’re putting the conference center in, I understand what it will do for the university and for the funding, but I wish there was more of a consideration for how it will affect students in the way that they’ve implemented it.”
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BUILD transforms empty shipping containers into medical clinics for third-world countries.
Brian Okosun — THE BATTALION
BUILD nears goal of 12 clinics Group in last year of sending pods to third-world countries By Emily Bost @EmmyBost BUILD, an organization that repurposes bare shipping containers into medical clinics for third-world countries, is four medical clinics away from reaching its goal of building 12 clinics in three years to honor each Aggie who died in the 1999 Bonfire collapse. The 120-member organization ships the medical clinics to third-world countries in particular need of medical aid. Eight out of the planned 12 containers have been successfully repurposed and relocated to underdeveloped countries since 2014 — two to Haiti, two to Honduras, two to Guatemala, one to Costa Rica and one to Jamaica. The clinics offer medical assistance to around 500 patients per week. The four clinics yet to be completed will be shipped to the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Moldova and Bolivia once finished. Marshall Grey, BUILD chief operating officer and mechanical engineering senior, said even though this is the last year BUILD will be dedicating its projects to Bonfire victims, it will continue to construct clinics in the future. “As long as there’s a project, BUILD will still be around and as long as there’s a student body, BUILD will still be around,” Grey said. “We are setting up to keep on building these clinics. These clinics really do make an impact and they are saving thousands of lives.”
One of BUILD’s medical clinics sent to Haiti is located in the area where Hurricane Matthew took hundreds of lives and caused mass destruction in the Caribbean. Mackenzie Rogers, BUILD chief financial officer and geology senior, said locals affected by the hurricane may benefit from the medical units already in use in Haiti. “One of the clinics that we have in Haiti is close to where Hurricane Matthew struck. So, a lot of the people who were impacted by that hurricane are moving to a city that’s close to one of our containers,” Rogers said. “That one is going to be in use a whole lot over the next several weeks, helping all of those people.” BUILD brought together more than 1,000 volunteers in 2015 and hopes to conjure up over 2,000 in 2016, said Michael Wang, BUILD CEO and finance junior. After Nov. 11, the project deadline, clinics will be shipped to Medical Bridges in Houston where they’ll be furnished with medical equipment for a discounted fee. “The last day for volunteers is Nov. 11 and then we’ve given ourselves about a week’s buffer zone to put any finishing touches on it,” Rogers said. “Around the end of November we’ll ship it to the Medical Bridges facility in Houston. Once they get there, they’ll fill them up with medical supplies right before they’re ready to be shipped off to the different countries.” Grey said he hopes BUILD’s future consists of collaborating with fellow students to create five or six clinics each semester and possibly construct a homeless shelter for veterans and a shower station for disaster relief. “The possibilities are limitless,” Grey said.
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HELP WANTED WB Liquors now hiring for a Part-Time Sales Associate. Are you enthusiastic and motived? Do you possess a strong work ethic? Do you enjoy working in a fun environment? We are looking for a few super stars that have high energy personalities to work for our customer-oriented company in a fast paced Retail environment. Apply online www.wbliquors.com or stop by at 2205 Longmire, College Station, TX 77845. WB Liquors, Inc. is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Let's Celebrate!
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A&M researchers use a type of bread mold to study and better understand how biological clocks work. Aimée Rodriguez — THE BATTALION
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Biological clock research studies how humans tick A&M professors, students look into mechanisms of internal clocks By Josh Hopkins @texasjoshua1 In the modern day, clocks surround us in our daily lives, but no clock has such an impact on our lives as the one residing deep in our mind, influencing our daily lives far more than the mere digital and mechanical timekeepers ever could. Deborah Bell-Pedersen, biology professor, aims to understand how our internal clocks, or circadian clocks, influence gene expression and behavior. The lab’s research uses Neurospora Crassa, commonly known as a type of bread mold, in order to discover more about how human clocks work. Bell-Pedersen said because the clock effects nearly every aspect of the human body applications for her research are tremendous. From helping to fight cancer cells to easing burdens on night shift workers to even battling jet lag, knowledge of the clock in invaluable. Bell-Pedersen said the clock has an impact on almost everything within the human body. “The clock regulates when our gut and liver produces enzymes to break down food, and that happens during the day when we are normally eating,” Bell-Pedersen said. “But if you are working the night shift and are eating at night, those enzymes that would normally metabolize your food are not there, they just aren’t made, and so the food gets stored as fat.” Bell-Pedersen said knowledge of the clock in incredibly important in health applications because of the way the clock changes human physiology depending on the time of the day. “Tylenol produces a toxic byproduct, and that toxic byproduct is detoxified by an enzyme which is under the control of the clock and that’s produced during the nighttime, and so Tylenol taken during the nighttime to quite safe,” Bell-Pedersen said. “Tylenol taken during the day you get a lot of this toxic byproduct.” Jennifer Jung, a second year graduate student in genetics, said the project is looking
past the mechanisms of the clock to try to understand the clock’s relation to gene expression. “It’s easy to say the clock is going to effect when you get sleepy and when you wake up, when you get hungry and stuff like that where you have rhythms in physiological processes,” Jung said. “But we work on a molecular level where we are asking how the clock controls how specific genes are expressed.” Jung said even in an organism as simple as the fungus the lab is using, the interactions between the genes are incredibly complicated. “We have this network called the hairball, which is genes that effect more genes, which effect more, and it’s all tied in with the clock,” Jung said. “And it’s a hairball because it’s a whole mess of different things effecting different things and then effecting themselves and other things further down the stream.” Kathrina Castillo, a first-year post-doctoral student, said the researchers have various methods of keeping track of the gene network. “One thing we do is we tag genes so we had a reporter to genes so we can monitor their expression in a cell,” Castillo said. “So they are still there, the gene is still there but now it is tagged with a reporter, for example a florescent protein, so when that protein is expressed it’s linked to that gene so you can see when and where it’s expressed.” Bell-Pedersen said because the researchers are trying to study the free-running clock the lab needs to be careful to control all of the other factors. “The biggest variable when you are looking at the clock is the environment,” Bell-Pedersen said.“So what we do is when we are studying just the clock we have everything in constant conditions. So constant dark, constant temperature, constant humidity, constant everything.” Castillo said every experiment raises new questions for the researchers. “A lot of questions come from experiments that are finished,” Castillo said. “And sometimes nothing happens it is not interesting at all, and so your hypothesis was rejected and you start again with another potential candidate.”
ELECTION 2016
VOTER REGISTRATION DEADLINE TUESDAY Tuesday, Oct. 11 is the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 8 election. In order to vote at the polling station located in the MSC students must be registered to vote in Brazos County. Mail-in registration forms can be picked up at both libraries on campus, but must be post marked by Oct. 11. Gig the Vote, in partnership with various other student organizations, will be available to register students to vote from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the SGA office in Koldus. Students must be 18 years of age on or before Nov. 8 in order to be eligible to vote. — Staff report