Trinitonian SERVING TRINITY UNIVERSITY SINCE 1902 s WWW.TRINITONIAN.COM
VOLUME 109, ISSUE 19 s February 10, 2012
What’s Inside
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
Trinity campus is going to the dogs n ACS, TUPD and Cat Alliance team up to fight the growing problem of stray canines in the area by Rachel Puckett Reporter
by Katie Bailey Editor
Broadway Rocks
Trinity Choir collaborates with the San Antonio Symphony for an evening of Broadway songs. Page 13
Ultimate V-day Guide Don’t know what to get your significant other for Valentine’s Day? Don’t worry – we got you covered.
In addition to the two cats killed by wild dogs in December and January on Trinity University’s campus, two more cats have died as the result of dog attacks since Jan. 31. A brown tabby cat, one unknown by Cat Alliance Trinity, was found dead at 5 a.m. on Jan. 31 near the Bell Center. Less than a week later on Feb. 2 between 4 and 5 a.m., the dogs attacked Jelly, a cat commonly spotted outside Miller Residence Hall. First year Claire Hannah heard the attack and notified a resident mentor who then contacted Wanda Olson, director of Residential Life. Jelly was taken to an emergency veterinary clinic but died as a result of the wounds. Wild dogs began plaguing Trinity’s campus in spring of 2011.
That semester, a jogger using one of Trinity’s upper campus jogging trails was bitten by one of the dogs. The increasing number of cat deaths and actual dog sightings has students wondering what responsibility the university has to capture and remove the dogs. Ryan Townsley, senior English major, saw two dogs near Murchison Residence Hall on Friday, Jan. 27, and called Trinity University Police Department. “The woman [at TUPD] that I spoke to asked me if there had been an attack, and I said no. She said that TUPD was aware of the two stray dogs … [and] that if I see an attack or hear anything happen to call them back,” Townsley said. Townsley was unsatisfied with TUPD’s response to his call. “I don’t think they believed it was a serious threat. I don’t think they’ll respond unless a student or faculty member is attacked by a dog,” Townsley said. “I’m disappointed that they didn’t dispatch anyone when I called them. They simply told me they were aware of the situation, which to me is doing nothing. They didn’t even recommend that I call Animal Care Services or anything.” n See STRAYS Page 4
Page 16
Opening Success Baseball team opens up the season with two wins against Schreiner University. Page 19
WEEKEND WEATHER
Friday 44° Low 38° High 63° Saturday Low High 59° Low 43° Sunday 51° Low 44° High 51° Low
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photo by Abhishek Chhetri
Students cheer on the San Antonio Rampage hockey team during Trinity Night at the Rampage which coincided with the team’s annual Pink in the Rink event to raise money for breast cancer research.
Ready, set, Rampage! by Kellie Benn
The San Antonio Rampage, the city’s minor league hockey team, held Trinity Night at the Rampage last Friday, Feb. 3. The event coincided with the team’s second annual Pink in the Rink event. Portions of the proceeds from ticket sales and the auction of the team’s pink-themed jerseys went to the San Antonio Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Association. The Rampage lost the game against the Lake Erie Monsters with a score of 3-1 in front of a record sold-out crowd of 16,158 people. However, they made up for it later that night by raising $48,000 from the auction to benefit Komen San Antonio. The highest selling item was the jersey worn by team captain, Nolan Yankman, which sold for $6,000.
photo by Abhishek Chhetri
Animal Care Services officers came to campus on Tuesday, Feb. 7, to discuss the stray dog problem with university personnel.
Faculty looks to future n Trinity Tomorrow committee holds ideas lab to review and revise curriculum for strategic planning by Kenneth Carruthers Intern
With the new semester underway, Trinity’s strategic planning initiative concludes its second and final planning year. Trinity Tomorrow, the strategic planning committee working to review the university’s curriculum, will hold special joint meetings this month to enable additional dialogue across the committees to coherently address areas of overlap and omission. Fact-finding delegations will also visit peer institutions to observe promising practices and prepare for implementation. “There are two things going on right now related to one another,” said Michael Fischer, vice president for Faculty and Student Affairs and Trinity Tomorrow cochair. “One is the overall strategic plan for the university, and that’s what the Trinity Tomorrow committee is overseeing. Then related to that is the review of the curriculum, and the review of the curriculum utilized this ideas lab, and that’s something a faculty committee is overseeing.” In early January, 23 faculty members participated in an ideas lab, which generated five general curriculum prototypes that will continue to be discussed and refined during the spring semester. This will eventually culminate in a proposal to be brought before the University Curriculum Counsel and Faculty Assembly. According to Mark Brodl, the George W. Brackenridge Distinguished Professor of Biology and chair of the Coordinating Committee for
Curricular Review, Trinity is the first university in the nation to use an ideas lab to generate new curricular models. “Other people have done ideas labs, but they’ve always been used, as far as we know, in non-academic settings,” said Lisa Jasinski, Trinity Tomorrow Special Projects Coordinator. “It’s a really intensive, three-day workshop. We would start in the morning at about eight, and we wouldn’t finish until about eightthirty or nine at night.” The Trinity Tomorrow committee knows that a review of the curriculum can be a drawnout procedure, but it is trying to maximize the time and effort of its members through outlets such as the ideas lab. “Normally, when curricula are changed, this is a real lengthy process because curriculum is the most important part of an education since it affects everybody, and it takes a lot of deliberation. What the ideas lab does is to try to make that process a little bit more efficient to serve as a more effective catalyst for ideas,” said Nancy Mills, Murchison Professor of Chemistry and Trinity Tomorrow co-chair. Members of the Trinity Tomorrow initiative hope the ideas lab leads to a way to design a curriculum for the 21st century at Trinity to create a forwardlooking curriculum. “We’re looking at different ways to do interdisciplinary courses whether that would be team-taught courses or courses that get bundled together or new courses that would be developed,” Jasinski said. “We’re also looking at something like the addition of a January term or a May-mester which would be like a four-week semester where we could do really different things and students would probably take one class.” n
See PLANNING Page 6