2 | The University Star | News | Wednesday, January 28, 2015
CITY
Pre-K opening delayed due to construction, weather issues By Nicholas Laughlin NEWS REPORTER @nick_laughlin San Marcos preschoolers will have to wait longer than expected to move into the new Bonham PreKindergarten (pre-K) Center, the first of its kind in San Marcos. The move-in date was originally scheduled for the end of January but has been moved to the weekend of Feb. 13-15, said Iris Campbell, San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District public information officer. Feb. 16 will be the first day of classes. Campbell said the delayed opening was due to inclement weather issues and a cutback in construction workers during the holidays. A ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony for the community will take place when Bonham opens, Campbell said. The new pre-K center will be located off of State Highway 123 on the site of the former Bowie Elementary campus. The Bowie campus will be demolished and re-
placed with a 600-student facility, according to the district’s website. “I am looking forward to the new school because it will be size-appropriate,” said Rosemary Garza, principle of the center, in a Sept. 24 University Star article. “The students now are in a school that is built for bigger kids. Now they will have access to things at their level.” The center will house 27 new classrooms, special education areas, a music room, a library, an activity center and computer labs. The existing cafeteria will be renovated to fit the needs of the students. The facility will be funded by a portion of the $76.98 million bond package the city passed May 2013, according to SMCISD. The pre-K center has a projected cost of $12.7 million, said Jay Wesson, director of facilities and operations for SMCISD in a Sept. 24 University Star interview. Garza is currently the principle of Hernandez Elementary School, which houses the districts pre-K, and will become principal of the pre-K. Mark Eads, SMCISD superin-
ASO, from front Students walking through the quad stopped to talk to the ASO members to find out the group’s mission and why a silent protest was held, Amokomowo said. “People came to us and asked us questions and kind of got enlightened about what happened,” Amokomowo said. ASO members wanted the protest to “build a sense of unity” within the community at the university, explained Best Ohanugo, mass communication freshman. Ohanugo said he hoped the protest
tendent, said in a SMCISD press release Garza and her team are
planning an open house for parents. Families should expect infor-
mation sometime in late January about the open house, Eads said.
LITTER, from front would bring awareness to ASO and “catch” students who didn’t think joining the group was possible. “If more light was shined (on) the attacks, then maybe more change would come,” Ohanugo said. “Too many people don’t know, so we feel by protesting that we can get more people involved and curious.” Amokomowo expressed ASO does not have any more protests planned. Members want to continue sending the message of “African Lives Matter” through social media.
H-E-B, from front “H-E-B is always trying to be ‘in the now’ and looks at the hype out there about what customers really want in their store,” McBain said. “It has worked so far. Since I have been here, we have brought in kombucha, gluten-free items and kale.” H-E-B’s focus is its “partners,” McBain said. “It is true that all the employees do know each other,” McBain said. “We do extracurricular activities every year like the partner picnic.
STAR FILE PHOTO
We all get together for drinks, food, games and entertainment to have a chance to get to know each other.” McBain said he knew working well with the people at H-E-B would be easy. This fact persuaded him to work for the company. “When I was hired, I said I would work here for five years, but I have changed my mind,” said McBain, who is on his sixth year at H-E-B. “I really want to grow with this company.”
ing the river clean, keeping our streets clean or any area of the city—that not only helps keep it beautiful but also helps to preserve our environment,” Wyatt said. “I’m really excited that we have an opportunity to connect with our citizens so that it’s not just the city doing it, or not just the community doing it, but that we’re working together to create a better San Marcos.” City staff is encouraging others to take part by asking participants to take pictures or videos of themselves throwing away litter and post with the campaign’s hashtag, #challengeSMTX, Kirwin said. Mayor Daniel Guerrero and other San Marcos residents have already started to use the hashtag on social media, posting videos and photos of trash being thrown away. “When our community remains clean, it makes us attractive to other people, including other businesses,
so you can look at it also as a way to encourage economic development,” Kirwin said. “It will show that we are a clean community and that our citizens and residents that live here, whether they are temporarily here as a student or if they are permanently here, care about this community and are putting that effort into it.” A graduate student recently conducted research in which she caught fish from the river and looked inside their stomachs to see what they had been eating, Van Sant said. She found plastic in the fish’s stomachs. People who participate in the challenge could potentially be helping the animals in the river. “There’s an issue with animals mistaking trash for food and eating it, and it can kill them,” Van Zant said. “There’s a bigger problem with this in the ocean because all of the rivers in the world drain into the
ocean, so all of the trash and plastic that is in the landscape floats downstream and into the ocean.” The issue of litter is serious due to the widespread use of disposable packaging and the inability of plastic to decompose, Van Zant said. She recommends students try to eliminate plastic usage as much as possible. Van Zant said joining the effort to help the environment by participating in river cleanups could reinforce the motivation for participation in the anti-litter campaign. “If everybody in the town picked up one piece of trash every day, that would be 50,000 pieces of trash that would not be in the environment and be in a trash can,” Van Zant said. “You can hashtag it and kind of encourage your friends to do the same thing if you want to.”
Center partners with organizations from Seguin, New Braunfels, Austin and other areas with a similar lack of resources in the hope of creating a regional response unit. Jane Hilfiger, a Texas State graduate student and local women’s rights activist, worries not having kits readily available close by will negatively affect the number of women who have the procedure done. Not having easy access to the correct personnel can “disenfranchise women” by making them feel “isolated,” Hilfiger said. The test is a long procedure (four to six hours) and the added hassle of going to Austin for the medical attention is “repeated trauma,” said Hilfiger, who worked closely with psychiatric patients in her message therapy career. Hilfiger is concerned diminishing
the already small number of women who are willing to report their rapes will lead to lower prosecution levels. As it stands, only three percent of rapists ever spend a single day in jail, according the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). Rape is often a serial crime, meaning lower prosecution levels could lead to more rapists being left on the streets, Hilfiger said. Women need to be more aware of what actions to take to ensure evidence is preserved, Hilfiger said. Showering, cleaning fingernails, brushing teeth or using the bathroom can affect how much forensic evidence is left behind, Hilfiger said. A longer time increment between the rape and the administration of the test can increase the chance of valuable evidence being lost, Hilfiger said.
RAPE KIT, from front Women’s Center are Texas State students. “There is not even a full-time SANE nurse in the (San Marcos) area,” Rodriguez said. The Central Texas Medical Center currently has three nurses on call from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. certified to administer a rape kit. Victims are most often taken to St. David’s hospital in Austin, where there is always a SANE nurse on call, if a rape occurs outside of those hours, Rodriguez said. The Hays-Caldwell Women’s Center provides volunteers—called the HEARTeam—who help victims find a hospital with a SANE nurse on staff, talk to officials and family members and can even remain in the room during the exam, Rodriquez said. The Hays-Caldwell Women’s
ZONING, from front change drew criticism from San Marcos citizens. Ben Patterson, resident of Valley Street, adjacent to the lumber property, told the commission he was concerned the city would use the property to construct a path college students could use to access the neighborhood. Patterson was worried the path would make the neighborhood unsafe. Allie Giles, longtime San Marcos resident, said
ENVIRONMENT
Stage 5 drought eminent without further conservation efforts By Alexa Tavarez SENIOR NEWS REPORTER @lexicanaa The amount of rainfall San Marcos and the adjacent regions received over the weekend was not enough to move the city out of Stage 4 drought conditions. Various areas in the city received an average of 2-4 inches of rainfall over the past weekend, said Dianne Wassenich, program director of the San Marcos River Foundation (SMRF). The recharge zone above Spring Lake received an “ideal” level of five inches in the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, Wassenich said. “That’s the perfect spot for us to get rain to really help us raise the river levels,” she said. As of Monday, river levels in San Marcos are up by 20 cubic feet per second (cfs), Wassenich said. Levels reached 143 cfs as of yesterday. The aquifer levels in Bexar County stood at 644.7 feet yesterday in the J-17 index well. The SMRF expresses concerns about the “water deficit” the region faces despite the past weekend’s promising rainfall, Wassenich said. “All of this is great, and we’re thrilled about the rain, but it’s not enough to end the drought,” Wassenich said. “We’re
still below average aquifer levels.” San Marcos is suffering from a “multi-year drought,” she said. “We are pumping more out of the aquifer the last few years than recharges from rainfall,” Wassenich said. “We’re in a deficit that is growing worse.” SMRF officials and other local naturalists anticipate a dry summer and are continuing to encourage conservation efforts to accommodate diminishing levels of spring water. “We’re very worried about spring flow levels and river levels this summer,” Wassenich said. “It’s going to take a lot of rainfall to end the drought.” Wassenich said drought conditions stifle any major progress. Several ongoing projects are attempts to protect the spring water. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to get some of that stuff done during a drought,” Wassenich said. “They are the type of projects you should do during a wet (season) to save up water.” Current predictions place San Marcos in a Stage 5 drought by August if considerable conservation efforts are not made in the area, Wassenich said. “I don’t mean to be discouraging, but we need a whole bunch more (rain),” she said. “We’re just hoping the drought will end before the springs go dry.”
the property is part of the Dunbar Historic District and should not be changed. Commissioner Angie Ramirez said she was uncomfortable with changing the zone to T4. She instead moved to change the zone to T3, which differs from T4 in allowable porch and sidewalk size. The commission rejected the move. The measure to change the property from LI to