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Ryan Saeger prepares to lead football team. SPORTS
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USD Onward Campaign raises $20 million in 10 months By Malachi Petersen
An extra set of eyes VPD officers equipped with body cameras By Ally Krupinsky
Ally.Krupinsky@coyotes.usd.edu
W
ith a small battery pack attached to the hip and a wire snaking up to a camera on a pair of sunglasses, Vermillion police officers are now filming their encounters with the public. Implemented in mid-July, the body cameras are worn by all on-duty Vermillion Police Department officers. When VPD Chief Matt Betzen started to advocate for their integration into the department, he saw the body cameras as serving three major areas: preventing liabilities, dramatically helping with investigations and functioning as training tools. Betzen said cases of police officers abusing their power around the country had little to do with the decision to purchase and implement the cameras. “I have a high degree of faith that my officers are doing it right, because I spend a lot of time training them, I spend a lot of time reviewing what they do, so I, like a
Malachi Petersen I The Volante
Vermillion Police Department officer Isaac Voss shows how his body camera
is connected to a battery pack on his waist. The actual camera is worn on the officer’s sunglasses. lot of professional agencies, am not afraid to put cameras on what we do,” he said. Before this summer, recording video was only an option in the department’s patrol cars on dash cam cameras. Now all officers, including those on bikes and walking downtown, will record their shifts. Bike and foot patrol officers are especially active during Dakota Days, VPD Lt. Luke Trowbridge said. “It’s going to be really advantageous for us to have that
video footage and audio recording when they have encounters on those units,” he said. VPD gets a few complaints a year, and they rarely result in officer discipline, Betzen said. Previous complaints against officers during traffic stops resulted in exoneration of the officer after reviewal of the patrol car footage. The department’s 19 body cameras cost approximately $22,000, Betzen said. The department also See CAMERA, Page A4
USD professors incorporate Missouri River into curriculum By Tatum Dean
Tatum.N.Dean@coyotes.usd.edu
The University of South Dakota received a oneyear grant to incorporate earth science and sustainability issues into a variety of academic departments. The $43,620 “Sustainable Rivers: Integrating Earth Science & Sustainability Across the Curriculum” grant will allow participating professors to take their classes to the Missouri River for various demonstrations. Thirteen different classes representing 11 different departments are participating in the program. The grant is a part of the InTeGrate project, a National Science Foundation program that aims to educate the public on geoscience and its relation to societal issues. Earth science professor
Mark Sweeney said this integration is an important addition to student curriculum. He said the program’s primary function is to show students how science relates to other topics such as English, history and economics. “As someone who has been teaching science at the university for a while, I saw two things: one, I really felt that we could do a better job of science literacy, and two, to show connections between classes,” Sweeney said. Participating classes will give students the chance to experience more on-site learning. “There’s a lot of faculty that already have research expertise in the river, and we wanted to do more place-based learning,” sustainability professor Meghann Jarchow said.
“For example, my sustainability and society class is partnering with Nebraska Indian College to go to Gavins Point Dam and look at the river on each side of the dam to look at the erosion.” Junior Becca Torres, a sustainability student, said she’s looking forward to doing hands-on learning at the river. “I am extremely excited. I want to specialize in marine conservation so this is a big step to learn more about water resources and different ways we can utilize it respectfully,” Torres said. “This also opens a door to explore the environment aspect of sustainability aside from that of the economic, political and social to really understand what brings all these branches together.”
Earth science and sustainability classes will be taking field trips throughout the semester along with a few other classes. One of the more unique classes, elementary education, will demonstrate how to teach K-12 students about river safety, Jarchow said. “There are a number of classes that are participating and some of the departments will be doing field trips and others won’t,” Sweeney said. “The whole idea is to see how we can integrate the science of rivers into different classes.” Jarchow said most faculty in the program will be coming from a non-scientific discipline. Although the grant will only last for a year, both Sweeney and Jarchow hope the incorpoSee RIVER, Page A4
Malachi.Petersen@coyotes.usd.edu
The University of South Dakota’s Onward Campaign has raised about $20 million in less than a year, moving the effort closer to its $250 million goal. Steve Brown, president and CEO of the USD Foundation, which is in charge of the campaign, said it has raised about $134 million prior to last year’s Red Tie event in October, and raised the additional $20 million in the past 10 months. “Our responsibility is to seek private donations and support from our alumni and friends and we do that on an ongoing basis,” Brown said. The campaign, which began in January 2012 and will continue until December 2018, is raising funds that will go toward construction projects, hiring of professors, student scholarships and research. So far about $60 million of the funds have been slated to pay for the construction of the new athletic sports complex and and outdoor track. That money is included in the overall $112 million price tag for the facilities. About $29 million of the $250 million goal will be set aside for professorships and endowed chairs, $12 million will be used for a student and faculty enrichment fund and $97 million will go toward scholarships. One student who has already benifitted from the campaign is Alisha Satterlee, a first-year nursing student from the Spearfish, S.D., area. Satterlee will recieve $40,000 over a four year period from a Spearfish-area specific scholarship. Without the scholarship, Satterlee said she would have had to borrow thousands of dollars worth of student loans. When she first heard the news over the phone, she thought someone was playing a prank on her. “I was sitting there with my financial aid packet there trying to see how I was going to pay for everything and someone called me and said ‘We’re going to help you pay for this’ and I thought they were lying,” she said. Every year thousands of potential donors are contacted by USD asking for donations. Many of these potential donors are USD alumni. Michelle Green, assistant vice president for constituent engagement for the USD Foundation, said the Foundation has a database of about 88,000 potential donors. These donors are then contacted by phone, email and direct mail to solicite donations. “From an annual giving standpoint, our big focus is scholarship dollars and providing that opportunity for students to come here and experience USD,” Green said. USD recieves about $21 million from alumni annually. Cash donations make up about $15 million of that, and the rest are pledges. When donating money, donors can pledge to pay a certain dollar amount over a period of time instead of paying money “up front.” Only about two percent of donations have to have their timeframes changed, Brown said. The USD Foundation is in talks with a handful of potential donors about possible seven and eight figure donations, Brown said. Since the start of the campaign, the average amount of donations has gone up significantly, something Brown said can be attributed to the visible construction of the DakotaDome expansion on campus. “We’ve certainly have been heart-warmed by the generosity of those folks and certainly the amount of dollars raised,” he said. Brown said he expects the Onward Campaign to reach and even surpass its goal within the Foundation’s seven year plan. See ONWARD, Page A4
File Photo I The Volante
Attendees applaud at the Onward Campaign Red
Tie Event on Oct. 10, 2014 in the Muenster University Center ballroom. To date, the campaign has raised about $154 million, moving closer to its $250 million goal.