Jan. 24, 2022
facebook.com/theutdmercury | @utdmercury
3
Flooding in the New Year
5
XAI drag show dazzles audience
7
Non-feasible gaming tokens
THE MERCURY | UTDMERCURY.COM
SHC offers booster shot
COVID surge once again
Students can make an appointment online
disrupts UTD spring policies TYLER BURKHARDT Editor-in-Chief
DANIELLE BELL | MERCURY STAFF
FATIMAH AZEEM Opinion Editor
The Student Health Center is now offering COVID-19 vaccine booster shots to eligible students. As with previous COVID-19 vaccines provided by the SHC, these boosters will be the Moderna brand. Director of Student Health Center Lea Aubrey said the state determines booster brand and quantity based on statewide vaccine availability. Students eligible for a booster include those who received all recommended vaccine doses of Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson at least five months ago – or two months ago if they received Johnson and Johnson – and are currently enrolled in the University. To get the booster, Aubrey said students should contact the SHC to make an appointment or schedule an appointment through the online patient portal link, which the SHC plans to send out through an announcement email in the near future. The scheduling link will also be available on the SHC website once the announcement goes out. “We would prefer that students reach out to us to see what’s available rather than walking in, so we aren’t overwhelmed,” Aubrey said. “Again, with COVID numbers still on the rise, we want to make sure we keep everyone protected by spacing out appointments. And if a student needs assistance with making an appointment, we’ll definitely do our best to accommodate them and find a time that works for their schedule.” Because SHC services are for students only, and the SHC isn’t partnering with vaccine providers such as Walmart like they did last semester, staff, faculty and employees can’t schedule booster appointments with them. They can, however, check with their primary health care provider or local health department to get a booster elsewhere. “It does seem that boosters are readily available in the community,” Aubrey said. “I know CVS, Tom Thumb and Kroger are offering them just off the top of my head, so staff, faculty and employees could go there. For the most part, they’d need to make appointments online like how we’re doing.” Students coming in for their SHC booster appointment should bring their vaccine card to verify that they’ve received their primary doses and so the clinician can sign off on the card documenting that they completed the appointment. “Not all places are requiring the booster shots, but different states have different requirements and I’ve had to show my vaccine card when traveling,” Aubrey said, “So, I think it’s easier for [students] to maintain the information in one place, which is why we’re signing off on the same card instead of giving them a new one.” The SHC will post advisements on what to do after receiving a booster, like the “wait in the building for 15 minutes after getting your shot to monitor for any side effects” advisements posted last year at the Walmart pop-up clinic. Aubrey said she highly recommends students fill out the Voluntary Booster Reporting Form after they complete their appointment. “It would definitely help the University keep track of the number of students vaccinated, and it’s helpful on our end for recordkeeping purposes,” Aubrey said.
UTD’s response to the omicron wave in the DFW area includes a number of policies beyond the week-long postponement of the semester and subsequent transition to online instruction through Feb. 4. Due to the high transmissibility of the omicron variant and the increased demand for testing in the North Texas region, the randomized surveillance testing program has been temporarily suspended. Faculty choosTHAOVY NGUYEN | MERCURY STAFF ing to teach in-person are being asked to utilize seating charts to aid the contact tracing process, which will remain the norm when the University returns to in-person instruction. Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín said that UTD continues to closely monitor the status of omicron cases locally and expects that a final verdict o n w hether Feb. 7 will mark the date of that return will be made by the end of the week. “[The d ecision t o r eturn] i s a bout t he do up to three or 4,000 tests a week. That's totality of circumstances and environment maximum capacity, and clearly that's not go- that we're facing in the North Texas region. ing to get you through 30 to 35,000 people We've set February 7 as our date to return to – employees and students – on any kind of in-person classes,” Martín said, “and we will make a decision at the latest by a week from regular basis.” Another difference i n a pproach a cross [Jan. 21] about whether or not we're going universities has been the vaccine incentive to hold to that, or whether we're going to programs offered by the schools. UTD had extend kind-of-remote instruction for an adthe most direct incentive program, offering ditional period. So we will give the campus a blanket $100 amount to any student that community at least a full week's notice before reported their vaccination via the self-report we make that determination.” Martín emphasized that the decision to reform, alongside entering vaccinated students into a raffle fo r ad ditional pr izes, in cluding turn is not being made based off the number tuition and housing rebates. Every other of positive tests on any single day, but rather school also offered drawings into a raffle, but in the context of how COVID-19 – specifically, the omicron variant – is impacting relfew offered a nything b eyond t hat. U TA – also the only campus still actively providing evant communities. That list begins with the incentives – did offer direct compensation to surrounding municipalities, but also includes students alongside the raffle en try, bu t th at analysis of broader public-health trends. Parcame in the form of $50 worth of gift cards ticular attention is being paid to the recovery trajectory of previous hotspots, like regions of to the university bookstore per dose. A perfect comparison between vaccination South Africa, which have almost uniformly on public school campuses remains impos- seen a rapid spike in case counts accompasible because of their inability to compel stu- nied by an equally-sharp decline after a few dents to report a positive case of COVID-19 weeks – and modelling by Associate Professor Dr. Timothy Bray suggests the metroplex or their vaccination status. Due to Governor
UNIVERSITIES COMBAT OMICRON SURGE WITH DIFFERENT TACTICS BEN NGUYEN
Managing Editor
Universities across Texas responded to the omicron surge and the pandemic with varying measures. How well have they succeeded? Looking at UT, UTSA, UTA, TAMU and UNT in comparison to UTD, most Texan universities have taken similar steps to UTD in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily health checks, proactive testing and constant mask and vaccine encouragement are a common theme across all of these schools. However, there are some differences in approach, especially regarding the beginning of the spring semester. The biggest difference between campus responses is in the in-person spring semester start date. Most campuses opted to use virtual instruction to delay the start of in-person operations for two to three weeks, with the exception of TAMU and UNT. The UT system collectively delayed in-person instruction, with UT set to return Jan. 31 while the rest of the system declared they would be online through Feb. 4. However, there doesn’t appear to be a strong link between in-person instruction and reported case numbers; for instance, UNT – already a week into in-
person instruction – reported 117 cases at time of reporting, while UTA has reported 723 active cases without yet teaching classes in person. Of the six universities compared above, UTD has the lowest amount of reported active cases: 73. However, UTD is also the only university in the UT System without on-campus testing either by demand or by appointment, which may be deflating that statistic. Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín said that will likely remain the case throughout the course of the semester, as UTD doesn’t have access to the same inhouse medical infrastructure as other large universities. “Realistically speaking, we don’t have the bandwidth to provide the walk-in, ondemand testing. Most of the institutions that I've seen that are providing that sort of service have health science centers associated with them. Many of them have nursing schools or even medical schools, and they're leaning heavily on that infrastructure. That makes a lot of sense,” Martín said. “We obviously don't have that. When we were doing asymptomatic testing, we had the capacity to
SEE UNIVERSITIES, PAGE 8
SEE POLICIES, PAGE 8
Intramurals leagues remain on-track
Spring semester UREC offerings let Comets continue play with slightly reduced hours, no spectators TYLER BURKHARDT Editor-in-Chief
ALBERT RAMIREZ | MERCURY STAFF
While the omicron variant has disrupted the start of many Comets’ 2022 academic schedules, on-campus recreation offerings and intramural leagues continue with only a few minor adjustments. “The biggest adjustment we have had to make is just with student staff,” said Benjamin Piper, University Recreation’s associate director of programs. “From now until we come back for February 7, we’ve had a lot of staff across the board decide to stay home until that point, and so of course we had to adjust our facility hours. You name the program, there’s probably something we’re doing to adjust and get through these three weeks.” For instance, instead of being open until 1 a.m. on weekdays, the Activity Center now closes at 10 p.m.; complete facility schedules can be found online on the UREC website. Similarly, the windows for intramural competition have been narrowed: instead of hosting games from 7 pm to midnight, the ongoing basketball league now plays from 7-10 p.m. “With intramurals,” Piper said, “we’ve made a couple of tweaks, but not a whole lot. We’re basically going forward with what we had planned, [although] our basketball league has been cut down a week. We won’t be allowing any spectators into the games, will do some spacing with the team benches, and otherwise we’re playing it by ear until something else comes down the pipeline that we
need to adjust to. As for group fitness, we’re offering three virtual fitness classes a week – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – but not any in-person classes until we get back.” Although student staffing for UREC as a whole is down, including for referees and intramural staffers, participation in the intramural leagues has not been significantly impacted by the semester’s early transition to online instruction. Piper said¬, “attendance and registration [have] been fairly steady. Female participation is lagging a little bit behind that of the guys, but that’s been a national trend for years in terms of intramural sports. So, for the most part, it’s remained pretty much where we thought it would be [prior to the start of the semester].” With steady participation and sufficient staffing at the moment, UREC’s events schedule, including programming for future intramural leagues, remains similar to the one released at the start of the semester; registration for those activities will continue to be hosted through UTD’s IMLeagues portal. However, Piper said, if the circumstances dictate, that could yet change. “With this new variant and everything that is happening in the local community, things are fluid. I encourage students to stay in tune with our social media and our website; that’s the easiest way to know if our hours flex or something changes,” he said.