TEEING OFF: Maryland women’s golf prepares for first NCAA tournament appearance since 2012, p. 11
THE CO-OP: We don’t deserve something as good as it. p. 9
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agriculture
Building fire sends 17 to hospital Police say a chemistry experiment went wrong Seventeen people were taken to the hospital after a fire in the University of Maryland’s Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building on Wednesday morning, according to the Prince George’s County Fire Department. Michael Yourishin, a department spokesperson, said they were sent as a precaution and their conditions were not life-threatening. Four students, eight county fire department officials, two University Police officers, a university employee, one assistant fire marshal and a contractor were transported to the hospital, he said. The department did not know how the fire started, he added. University of Maryland Police wrote in a campus alert that “a chemical reaction caught on fire” during a lab experiment. The building was evacuated and closed while first responders investigated the scene, another alert read. There wasn’t any “imminent danger to life or health within the area,” Yourishin said, and the building was cleared of smoke. In a campus alert sent just after 4 p.m. Wednesday, University Police wrote the building was open, but certain rooms — 2113 through 2235 — would remain closed “until the clean up is done.” Stadium Drive was initially closed between Regents and Paint Branch drives. newsumdbk@gmail.com by
Arya Hodjat @arya_kidding_me Staff writer
fruits of his labor
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND plant sciences professor Christopher Walsh stands in an orchard of Antietam Blush apple trees in Keedysville, Maryland. JULIA NIKHINSON/THE DIAMONDBACK
SGA
SGA rejects adding diversity vice president The amendment was shot down at the last meeting of the legislative session The University of Maryland’s SGA rejected an amendment that would have added a diversity and inclusion vice president to its executive board, following an emotionally-charged debate early Thursday morning. The amendment failed in a vote of 11-14 — taken at about 1 a.m. at the last meeting of the body’s legislative session — after about an hour-long discussion about the current state of diversity and cultural group representation on the campus. by
Morgan Politzer @thedbk Staff writer
By Jeff Barnes | @thejeff barnes | Senior staff writer
On an early spring day a few miles away from the Antietam National Battlefield, a group of busy honeybees land on the blossoms of a small apple tree. That tree, a 20-year-old Antietam Blush, is the byproduct of nearly three decades of work by the University of Maryland — and of course, those buzzing insects. Christopher Walsh, a professor in the plant science and landscape architecture department at this university, set out to breed an apple tree that would thrive in the mid-Atlantic climate in 1991. He planted just over 100 trees — then relied on the bees to do the rest. “I didn’t go out and hand pollinate, I let Mother Nature do it,” Walsh said. Twenty-eight years and a patent later, Walsh’s goal bore fruit: the apple he co-invented with a student from this university now grows in about ten different orchards. But it all started at the Western Maryland Research and Education Center. That’s where Walsh planted about 100 Gala trees around two McIntosh Wijick trees to start the breeding process. On top of being able to withstand the hot and rainy mid-Atlantic summers, he wanted the trees to be disease-resistant and have a late October harvest, which Walsh said would encourage more people to flock to pick-yourown orchards. Then, Walsh said he used seedlings from those parent trees and combined them with heat tolerant commercial varieties like Fuji, Cripps Pink and York.
In 2007, he enlisted the help of Julia Harshman, who had recently transferred to this university from Rutgers University. She was a sophomore at the time, and Walsh’s advisee, when she said he approached her and asked if she wanted to be part of a research project. “I said sure, not really knowing what I was getting myself into,” said Harshman, who still works as a plant breeder today. The project had a bit of a rocky start, according to Harshman. “So we get up to the orchard for the very first day, he’s showing me everything — I won’t say chaos, but something close to that,” she recalled. “Nothing had been labeled, we didn’t have counts on anything, almost no data had been collected.” Walsh said the agricultural team started with about 2,000 seeds, but ended up having to remove many of the newly planted trees due to issues with disease and fruit quality. After a few years, one tree stood apart from the rest for its size, health and the taste of the apples it produced: Tree #101. “101 was unique, in my experience, in that it stood out from very early on, that that was going to be the winner,” Harshman said. Harshman named the new breed the Antietam Blush, both for the color of the fruit it bore and the orchard’s proximity to the historic Civil War battlefield, which saw the bloodiest day in U.S. history, with more than 22,000 casualties. “It’s a Maryland name, but also to honor the many, many, many Americans who died there,” Walsh said. Because the tree does not grow very tall, Walsh said, its limbs droop as the fruit grows larger, making the apples easier to pick without a ladder. Because more sunlight can reach the apple, the result is a better-tasting fruit, he said.
See sga , p. 8
See apples, p. 8
COMMUNITY
UMD, Bowie State students remember Richard Collins, discuss racism hasn’t forgotten that it really could have been any student of color who was killed that night — including him. Collins went anyway. “We are Lt. Collins,” he said. Later that night, he was stabbed to death while waiting “We really are — we are young, for an Uber on the University of our lives are ahead of us, and it Maryland’s campus. Sean Ur- was just a matter of anyone in banski, a former student at this the group chat being in town.” For much of the evening on university, is awaiting trial on hate crime and murder charges Friday, students, faculty and officials from both universiin the killing. Two years later, Amadu stared ties joined together to celebrate out into a crowd of at least 100 Collins’ life, discuss race relapeople who came together in tions on their campuses and a gathering of the Bowie State share ideas for eradicating the and Maryland communities. He See collins, p. 8
Heidi Holland comes of age and confronts the true cost of "having it all."
About 100 students, faculty and staff gathered for panel, open-mic dialogue by
On the night
Victoria Ebner of May 20, 2017, @victoria_ebner Dawuda Amadu’s Senior staff writer phone lit up with a tex t f ro m a group chat of other cadets in Bowie State University’s ROTC program. 2 n d L t . Ri c h a rd Co l l i n s wanted to know if anyone was up for a night out in College Park. They weren’t; Amadu said they were away for training at the time.
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