03-31-15

The Oracle TUESDAY, MARCH 31, 2015 I VOL. 52 NO. 102

Inside this Issue

A S S T .

Infinity Third: sounds to soothe the soul.

Page 4

Montage

S PORTS Flowers’ mobility is setting him apart from the pack.

BACK

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Police search for would-be robbers ‘Game of Thrones’ prescreens tonight

By Brandon Shaik

LI F E STYLE

The Index

News.................................................................1 Lifestyle......................................................4 Opinion.......................................................6

N E W S

E D I T O R

While hosting a party Friday night, a USF student heard a knock at the front door of his apartment, assuming it was another guest. It wasn’t until after he opened the door that the party turned into a nightmare.

“He’s got a gun!” the victim yelled, when two men stood at his door in Sunridge Condominiums on 50th Street, one pointing a rifle.

As the victim shut the door, the armed man fired a shot into the apartment, though no one was injured. The victim and two others were able to keep the door closed while the barrel of the rifle remained wedged between the door and the frame.

Neither suspect entered the apartment.

The first suspect was described as a black or Hispanic male, early 20s, 5-9, and between 160 and 170 pounds with large eyes, a thin trimmed goatee and mustache, a gray hoodie, long shorts and

tan boots.

The second suspect was described as a black or Hispanic male, early 20s, 5 -9 and between 160 and 170 pounds wearing a dark blue or black hoodie, jeans, a bandana covering most of his face from his nose down and armed with a black assault rifle.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office is seeking information regarding the identity of the men, and Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay is offering a reward of up to $3,000 for information that leads to the arrest of these men.

Books, not bombs

ORACLE PHOTO / SEBASTIAN CONTENTO

n Students for a Democratic Society protested USF and U.S. foreign policy Monday outside Cooper Hall. PAGE 3

By Wesley Higgins N E W S

E D I T O R

A chair in a theater may not compare to the Iron Throne, but it will be the best seat to the latest happenings of Westeros.

Tonight, USF students will get the chance to watch the season five premiere of “Game of Thrones.” The prescreening is almost two weeks before the episode airs April 12 on HBO. Though the screening starts at 8 p.m., students are recommended to get to the Marshall Student Center Ballroom well beforehand for a better chance at one of 700 seats. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the event will feature a costume contest, photo booth, foam sword fighting and prizes prior to the show.

Only USF students are invited to the prescreening. Faculty and staff will have to wait for the HBO premiere.

The screening is brought to students by USF Housing and Residential Education.

The university, which has partnered previously with HBO to provide HBO GO to students who live on campus, is a stop on HBO’s college tour.

Campus residents who are interested in catching up with the series — renowned for its complex political struggles playing out in a fantasy world of dragons and snow zombies — can watch all the episodes on hbogo.com.

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Protesters demand books, not bombs

By Brandon Shaik A S S T .

N E W S

E D I T O R

In an effort to separate USF from the U.S. military, the USF Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a protest.

Along with the SDS, Raices en Tampa — an immigrants’ rights group — the Committee to Stop FBI Repression and the Green Party Alliance organized an anti-war protest in front of Cooper Hall on Monday afternoon as part of the SDS’s Books Not Bombs campaign.

The SDS organized the campaign in an effort to “end the memorandums of understanding between USF and U.S.

Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which are the military bodies that control operations in Latin America and the Middle East,” said Danya Zituni, a junior majoring in international studies.

“What these memorandums of understanding do is they say, ‘We agree with what the U.S. military is doing, we give you an opportunity to recruit students on campus, do weapons development, etc.’ So they can cancel these memorandums at any time, so these protests are to list our demands and hopefully get it canceled,” Zituni said.

As part of the campaign,

the SDS held events such as a teach-in, which encouraged students to learn about the university’s involvement with CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM, a relationship they claim is the university’s support of the military’s actions in the War on Terror.

Last November, the Tampa Tribune reported USF entered into a memorandum of understanding with CENTCOM and USF’s Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean signed a pact with SOUTHCOM. As a result of these agreements, the SDS began protesting these entities’ right to exist on campus, which included

passing out flyers urging students “Don’t Join the Military” and staging a die-in, according to the Tampa Tribune.

“As USF students, we find that these memorandums make us complicit in the war crimes that are being committed abroad,” Zituni said. “To end this complicity, to end our complicity in it, we want to end these contracts as students that are against war, against imperialism, against racism.”

As part of this protest, SDS and other organizations gave speeches regarding the U.S. interventions in Venezuela, Iraq and Syria, among others, including invasions, bombings and coups.

“White Lie” -Tina Piracci

Creative Works Showcase in the Centre Gallery displays works based on the common reading book “Full Body Burden.” The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. until April 10. ORACLE PHOTO / BRANDON BENJAMIN

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Lifestyle

Infinite Third: music to soothe the soul UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

By Grace Hoyte M A N A G I N G

E D I T O R

When you think of Billy Mays, the OxiClean guy, the last thing that comes to mind is beatboxing. So, it must come as a surprise that Mays’ son, Billy Mays III, now makes a career of doing just that.

Mays III, who has played guitar since high school, is Infinite Third, a one-man band self-described as “intense yet relaxing, serious yet playful, focused yet wandering (and) dreamlike yet grounded in reality” on his website. “(Music) is a way of turning different times … into art,” he said.

Mays III said his live perfor-

PHOTO COURTESY OF GEN SOUREN

mances are usually improvisations, as are his recordings. It is the “real emotion” that he looks for and that he manages with this technique.

“I always really enjoyed crafting songs,” Mays III said. “(In high school), I created really bad music, but it was finished.”

He cites Scottish post-rock group Mogwai as his greatest influence. Its ability to make whole albums of hugely varied material while still maintaining a signature sound is something he looks to do with his own music.

Sequencing music, he said, has always been enjoyable and easy for him.

However, things have not always been easy for the

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28-year-old musician. Mays III said he began releasing music in 2009, the same year his father died.

“When he died, he was at his peak,” Mays III said. Until that time, Mays III had been very close with his father.

In addition to his father’s passing, 2009 proved a cruel year when his apartment burned down and he lost all of his instruments.

In such a light, his music, he said, is a means of catharsis.

However, music has not been his only means of release.

In early 2009, Mays III said, his father’s official website was in the works. After the spokesman’s passing, the notion of an official website was scrapped in favor of what his son named

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WheresBillyMays.com.

The site was designed as a tribute to his father. It has been an important means of “closure,” he said.

WheresBillyMays.com is a trivia website for fans and interested parties, and Mays III said he still receives mail from fans and finds online pictures and material about his father, which he puts on the site.

The tribute to his father doesn’t stop there.

Mays III has begun working on a documentary about his life, starting in his hometown of Philadelphia. His father, an extraordinarily busy man, spent most of his son’s early life traveling to various homeshows in other states.

“The only time I really got to

see him was at the Philadelphia home-show,” Mays III recalled.

“I would sit under his booth and play with toys while he was pitching.”

The project promises to provide even more peace and closure. In the meantime, Mays III continues to work on his music while moving people through his ambient, guitarcentric sound.

His newest album, “Gladly,” which will be released April 3, continues in this trend of keeping with a signature sound.

The record, his 22nd studio album, was released for preorder this weekend.

Infinite Third’s music can be found on YouTube. com, as well as his website, infinitethird.com.

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FLOWERS

Continued from PAGE 8

ally has to be brought down to the turf this fall. In limited action last year, he rushed for 73 yards on 13 attempts.

Evidence of this play-making ability came with just over four minutes left in the first quarter.

Flowers faked out the defense on a run to the right and then pitched the ball to the left to running back Darius Tice, who picked up 17 yards and converted the third down.

“You could say Quinton opens up the game more because he’s more athletic,” running back Marlon Mack said. “They’re trying to watch the read-option more with him so he opens up the game more than the other quarterbacks.”

USF players of the week USF softball pitcher Karla Claudio was named the American Player of the Week after the Bulls won two of three against Tulsa this weekend.

Claudio did all of her damage during the Bulls’ doubleheader Saturday. The senior pitcher hit three home runs and had nine RBIs, which included a grand slam in Game 1 of the series.

She is the only player in the AAC this season to have been named both the conference player of the week and pitcher of the week.

Collegiate Baseball named senior Buddy Putnam, who also hit a grand slam over the weekend, as the Louisville Slugger National Player of the Week.

Over his past four games,

Putnam has hit .438 with eight runs and 10 RBIs. With this award, he has become the first player in program history to win a national player of the week award.

Women’s golf player fourth in Web.com Intercollegiate Following the first two rounds of play in the Web.com Intercollegiate at the par-72 Marsh Landing Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, USF women’s golfer Ashley Burke sits tied for fourth place.

Burke birdied six holes over the first two rounds and is currently at 3-under par.

As a team, the Bulls are in 12th place out of 17 teams heading into the final round today in the last match of the regular season.

SURGING

Continued from PAGE 8

In their past four games, the starters combined to allow 17 earned runs — two of those starters lasted two innings or fewer.

In three of those four games, a four-run inning hampered the Hatters before the fifth inning.

Looking at the Bulls’ previous five games, their starters have combined to allow only 11 earned runs. Ace Jimmy Herget was also named to the AAC Honor Roll after tossing six shutout innings Friday.

For two teams that have been fairly opposite, USF will see who comes up on the winning end tonight in DeLand at 6:30.

Opinion

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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Let’s stop separating the arts from STEM time being.

This, of course, isn’t a new debate. STEM has been praised for its post-graduate job stability and, as the column addresses, the need for STEM education is due to the lack of entry-level job applicants who are familiar with these subjects.

Still, it makes no sense to value the benefits of the arts — especially those in relation to STEM majors — while simultaneously writing them off.

The arts don’t just exist to pepper broad, creative and analytical thinking skills into STEM education, although they do add this skill set. Rather, they are valuable in their own right, and the integrative term STEAM doesn’t water down the focus on science and math.

Even without trying to shorten STEAM and further stigmatize the arts, one can still recognize the differences between the arts and STEM fields.

It’s not as if having a background in the arts will hold a science or math graduate back from getting a job in her field, just as graduating with a liberal arts degree doesn’t guarantee unemployment. As mentioned in a Forbes article, having internship experience can offset what-

Isabelle Cavazos COLU M N I ST

Many college students have likely been within earshot of some witty remark about what liberal arts majors lack in comparison to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors.

A recent Inside Higher Education column only added more fuel to this debate and argued for the erasure of the “A” in “STEAM,” an acronym that integrates the arts into STEM education. Immediately after defending the arts as a “source of enlightenment and inspiration,” the column then pointed to the ways STEAM takes too much attention away from the hard sciences.

In suggesting that the arts are counterproductive to the push for students to prepare for STEM jobs, it implies that the arts can go on the backburner, at least for the

the Oracle

ever negative connotation some employers have of arts degrees.

Acknowledging the arts isn’t a bad thing. As noted in an article on Fast Company, liberal arts graduates can bring perspectives they practiced in the classroom to tech companies, from the ability to think beyond just one “correct solution” for a problem to the ability to think of finding longterm solutions to a problem.

The appeal here isn’t just to defend the worth of these degrees in the workplace. Rather, it lies in understanding how these abstract skills in a particular field have their applications in STEM careers.

It’s time to end conversations about whether arts degrees are more valuable than science degrees, or vice versa, as separate career pathways. Obviously, those heading into either field have some idea of what the workplace expects of graduates of each. So when it comes to how students perceive STEM degrees and the market for jobs in these fields, the “A” for arts is still needed in order to make sure these graduates harness skills they might otherwise miss.

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What you said In light of the Washington Post report on a push in Virginia for teacher evaluation information to be released to the public, as is the case in Florida, editors Isabelle Cavazos and Adam Mathieu asked students their thoughts on making evaluation data public.

“I think it should not be public because teachers shouldn’t be punished for students who don’t try.”

— Raza Zaidi, a junior majoring in biomedical sciences

“I think it should be public.

If not public, I feel like the parents should be informed in how the teacher does their job.” ­— Randy Esfahani, a freshman majoring in cell and molecular biology

“I would say make it private. Parents could choose their kids’ teachers, and that would be discrimination in a way.”

Isabelle Cavazos is a junior majoring in English and Spanish.

— Dane Watson, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering

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“It’s fine if it’s made public. Parents should know exactly what is happening in school.”

— Eesha Nashikkar, a freshman majoring in psychology

Classifieds UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

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Call LaFleur’s: 813.264-5000.

LaFleur’s Gymnastics Coaching Positions Available Immediate openings for experienced, enthusiastic Girls Compulsory and XCEL coaches.

Contact Alecia at 813.264.5000 or optionalgirls@lafleurstampa.com.

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Notebook

Flowers stands out early in QB competition

By Vinnie Portell S P O R T S

E D I T O R

As has been the case in the two previous seasons under coach Willie Taggart, the Bulls find themselves in the midst of an offseason without a starting quarterback named for the upcoming fall.

The three quarterbacks with a real shot at the starting job — senior Steven Bench, junior Mike White and sophomore Quinton Flowers — all took the majority of snaps under center during USF’s spring game Saturday.

But after watching the three quarterbacks combine for three interceptions and only one touchdown, Taggart said he still has more to evaluate before settling on a starter.

“We’re not going to make a decision on who the quarterback will be based on one game, a scrimmage where they’re all mixed up,” Taggart said. “But we are going to evaluate them on technique, fundamentals and execution of the play. I always tell them we need a guy that can consistently run our

offense and not turn the football over.”

Flowers was the only quarterback to not turn the ball over Saturday, but the sophomore was 6-of-17 on passes and couldn’t complete a single touchdown-producing drive.

In comparison, White completed 11-of-17 passes for 83 yards and threw one interception while Bench completed 5-of-11 passes for 48 yards and threw two interceptions.

Though Flowers didn’t score Saturday, the dual-threat quarterback’s game was limited by a twohand touch rule that was in place for the quarterbacks to avoid injury.

The 6-foot, 217-pound sophomore was visibly frustrated to be whistled down several times as he tried to extend plays with his legs.

“I’m not that type of guy, that tip-tap touch guy,” Flowers said.

“You have to make a sure tackle on me. I’m not going to let just one guy tackle me.”

Flowers could use his speed to open up the offense when he actu-

n See FLOWERS on PAGE 5

Unlike Stetson, which has four batters over .300, the Bulls’ only slugger over .300 is junior Levi Borders. ORACLE FILE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU

Sophomore Quinton Flowers accounted for the most yards from either offense with 139 in USF’s spring game Saturday. ORACLE PHOTO/ADAM MATHIEU

Baseball

Surging Bulls ready for Hatters

By Tiana Aument C O R R E S P O N D E N T

Since USF beat Stetson in Tampa two weeks ago, the teams have gone in completely different directions. They appear opposite, with USF on the preferred end of the spectrum.

The Bulls (20-8-1) are riding a five-game winning streak, while the Hatters (14-15) have dropped their past four.

Moreover, the teams’ most recent games nearly had inverse outcomes. On Sunday, USF crushed Cincinnati 15-4, and Stetson suffered a 15-5 blowout to Creighton.

The Hatters have cooled down while the Bulls have heated up.

First baseman Buddy Putnam has had the hottest bat for the Bulls. The senior made program history Monday when he earned a national player of the week honor. Collegiate Baseball named him the Louisville Slugger Player of the Week after he batted .438 with four homers — including a walk-off grand slam — and 10 RBIs. “Buddy’s giving us great at-bats, but great at-bats with power,” coach Mark Kingston said. “He’s always been a singles hitter. This year, he’s adding power to his game ... we’ve always talked about the easiest way to score runs in college baseball is with speed or with power, so with him to be a power threat right now is really important.”

Putnam leads the Bulls with six home runs. Catcher Levi Borders and center fielder Austin Lueck are tied for second with four.

Borders has shown consistency as the only Bull batting over .300. The junior is hitting .320 with a team-high eight doubles.

Four Hatters are batting over .300. Outfielders Vance Vizcaino and Cory Reid, catcher Garrett Russini and third baseman Josh Powers are hitting .330, .322, .311 and .304, respectively.

Even with such a potent lineup, Stetson has had difficulty winning because its starters have been inefficient, which has exhausted the bullpen.

n See SURGING on PAGE 5