Cougar Cards are in the planning phases to be updated. They will combine multiple cards students typically use on campus and combine into one “Campus Smart Card.” | Michael Slaten/The Cougar

The Cougar Card Advisory Committee plans to centralize the capabilities of the multiple cards students use to one “Campus Smart Card,” expanding the card’s purview to cover the functions of the Cougar Card and Metro Q-Card as well as allow students to access parking and transportation and purchase items from vending machines.

The committee stated in its October presentation that one of the key priorities for fiscal year 2018 is to implement the new Campus Smart Card, which will become an all-in-one card that students can utilize.

Currently, students may have to utilize multiple cards for various activities at campus. If students wish to purchase a soda from a vending machine, they can use their credit cards. Likewise, if students wants to ride the Metro system, they can utilize a student Metro Q-Card.

“The Cougar Cards we currently have are pretty basic in my opinion,” said exploratory studies freshman Jake Boone said. “All I use it for is the dining halls and to get into my residence hall.”

Exploratory Studies freshman Robin Kay said the Campus Smart Card will “make life on campus easier” by allowing students to use the Campus Smart Card to take the METRO rail or bus.

Other universities, such as Silicon Valley University and Auburn University, have begun to implement systems like the ones proposed. They feature more digitized versions of their student IDs with the option to add it to their mobile wallets. The University of Texas also has a Virtual ID system that allows students to utilize virtual IDs at some locations. 

The changes also include a potential increase in the student renewal fee for their Cougar Cards. The replacement fee for a Smart Card may be increased from $10 and extended to faculty and staff, according to the Oct. presentation by the Cougar Card Advisory Committee, to compensate for the added technologies in the card.

For students who frequently lose their card, like Psychology junior Tiffany Montano, this may present problems. Montano said she already thinks the $10 replacement fee for Cougar Cards is too much. She said she would just go without a Cougar Card until she absolutely needed one if the replacement fee was raised. 

Boone, however, is all for the change to Cougar Cards.

“I think that the change to Cougar Cards could be a huge step for student convenience,” Boone said. “It would be nice only needing to carry around a single card for all those things instead of two or three.”

In the CCAC Nov. meeting, TouchNet + Heartland OneCard was selected as the vendor for the new Campus Smart Card, according to the presentation made during the meeting.

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Researchers at the Hobby School of Public Affairs aim to understand the effects of Hurricane Harvey by following a group of up to 2,000 Houstonians for five years. | Emily Burleson/The Cougar

Cleaning up the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey and moving forward will be a lifelong journey for many Houstonians, and a study by researchers at the Hobby School of Public Affairs seeks to learn from it.

Renée Cross, associate director of the Hobby Center for Public Policy, sees the study as a road map to understand the behaviors of people undergoing disaster preparation and what they do in the aftermath of a storm.

“We’re looking not only at what happened (to them) during Harvey, but what is happening to them after,” Cross said.

In the coming weeks, Houston-area residents will receive phone calls via a process called random digit dialing, in which phone numbers are generated randomly, according to a news release. Participants will be asked to respond to an array of questions surrounding their Harvey experience.

The panel-based survey will follow between 1,500 to 2,000 people for the next five years in four counties that encompass parts of Houston: Harris, Montgomery, Fort Bend and Brazoria. 

Researchers, according to the press release, will examine recovery and disaster preparedness efforts and attempt to gauge public support for policy proposals like flood mitigation, disaster-relief strategies and others. The survey lists questions that will focus on how their actions were influenced by past severe weather events, what information they sought out before the hurricane and what knowledge they have about policies in the Houston area that focus on natural disasters.

Corporate communications senior Jackeline Ardon has seen the damage caused by Harvey firsthand and continues to work in its aftermath every day. The building she works in at the East Houston Regional Medical Center took on 6 feet of water, and two months after the storm, daily duties are still conducted at a snail’s pace, she said. 

Ardon sees the city of Houston in desperate need of a flood plan so that businesses don’t spend months in short supply of resources or space after hurricanes. Ardon said there must be some sort of system in place.

Similar studies have been performed by universities following events like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The researchers are drawing on the expertise of members like Robert Stein at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, who has surveyed people who experienced the effects of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike.

The second wave of the study is expected to begin in six months, Cross said. Over the course of five years, the study will look to gauge the interest and commitment of residents to seriously explore policy options that could potentially cost massive amounts of money, like the construction of a third reservoir to complement the aging Barker and Addicks reservoirs.

The city’s residents have already been confronted with lingering issues that demand to be addressed, but mechanical engineering senior Isaac Lingenfelter said that before any concrete steps can be taken, people need to know what’s going on.

“There’s a lot of people who stayed in their homes,” Lingenfelter said. “So making sure that people know when it’s an issue, when it’s a serious issue, having time to get out is equally as important.”

Cross said understanding these issues that show no sign of disappearing is important, but for change to occur, communities will need to see themselves not as independent, but as units that can move toward definitive fixes. 

Collecting thousands of responses will aid the effort of helping people realize they’re not alone in the aftermath, Cross said. 

The research is also meant to help gauge public opinion toward specific flood-related policy proposals, Cross said.

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Air Force veteran Josh Stone credits his military experience for teaching him the value of family, education and teamwork. | Jakob Walker/The Cougar

Before his deployment to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Air Force veteran Josh Stone was stationed at Holloman Air Base in Otero County, New Mexico. He ended his tenure with the rank of senior airman, the highest rank an enlisted airman can receive.

Stone, a supply chain and logistics junior, decided he would join the military after he was unable to pursue a firefighting career due to an employment shortage in 2009.

He was driven to join the Air Force specifically because his father served in the branch for 20 years.

 “I just grew up around it,” Stone said.

Stone learned many skills including teamwork, logistics, which is now his major, and the importance of education during his time serving. 

People often ask Stone if the military is something they should consider.

“It’s a good option to learn some skills,” Stone said. “Also, if you don’t know what you want to major in college, it’s a good choice.”

Stone said that joining the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC, is a better option for people who are more interested in making a career out of the military and have good academic standing. People in ROTC can receive an officer rank and get their education by the time they enter the military.

The military helped Stone get through college and helped him grow as a person, but it came with sacrifices, he said.

“After being away for so long, it can feel lonely,” Stone said.

He learned the importance of family and appreciates the time he served in the military.

“When I wear the uniform, I feel a sense of pride,” Stone said. “People look at you differently; people respect you. They know you helped fight for them to live their life the way they want.”

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Feminists Martha P. Cotera, Charlotte Bunch, Melba Tolliver and Gloria Steinem spoke at a two-day conference to honor the National Women’s Conference 40th anniversary at UH. | Autumn Rendall/The Cougar

Speakers from the National Women’s Conference in 1977, at which 2,000 elected delegates and roughly 32,000 observers attended, came to the University of Houston on Monday and Tuesday to honor the event’s 40th anniversary and speak about feminist issues.

Martha P. Cotera, an author, a librarian and women’s rights activist, delivered on Monday a speech titled “Pasionarias of 1977: Latinas, Liberation, and Remaking Feminist Citizenship” as a part of the two-day women’s conference.

“Progressive women succeed through hard work, commitment, effort and passion that you have when you’re the most vulnerable and desperate,” Cotera said.

Though opinions on feminist issues in the United States were divided in 1977, the people who formed NWC felt it was most important to unite and conquer, Cotera said.

The 1977 National Women’s Conference was held in succession to a presidential executive order in 1974, which created the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year.

Members at the 1977 conference created a “Plan of Action” which was later brought to President Jimmy Carter. 

“We put our national networks in action, and we started to work the process of getting appropriate representation,” Cotera said. 

The John P. McGovern Endowment began in 1999 and supports the John P. McGovern Annual Award Lectureship in Family, Health and Human Values in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at UH. Cotera was honored with the John P. McGovern Award medallion before she delivered her speech.

Her involvement with NWC began during her election as a delegate to the Houston conference at the preliminary Texas state meeting. She was one of six women featured in “Las Mujeres de la Caucus Chicana,” a documentary that discussed Chicana participants at the 1977 NWC.

“She is an important voice and leader on feminism throughout the decades, an independent scholar, renowned historian and author of feminist classics,” said associate vice president and general manager of Houston Public Media Lisa Shumate.

Cotera reflected on the 1977 conference and discussed the problems with electing politicians who do not support women, the struggles among social classes and minorities and exclusionary actions by government.

“We still face awesome challenges with elimination of social rights and entitlement,” Cotera said.

A roundtable discussion was held with special guests Charlotte Bunch, Melba Tolliver and Gloria Steinem via video chat after traffic prevented the feminists from making the meeting.

Bunch, a writer, activist and organizer in the feminist and human rights movements, as well as the founding director and senior scholar in the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, spoke about lesbian feminism and the need to come together to face feminist issues.

“It was just refreshing to be able to hear someone from that community who is an activist and who did such great work to be able to help LGBT folks like me,” said integrated communications senior My-Linh Tran.

Tolliver, a journalism professor at the University of Michigan, worked for ABC and became the first African-American to anchor a network news program in 1967. Her speech focused on women and minorities and their influence in the media.

Steinem, a political activist and journalist, is a co-founder of the Women’s Media Center, an organization that works toward media equality. Steinem’s speech focused on the impact of the 1977 conference.

“We all agreed that discrimination against lesbians was a feminist issue,” Steinem said.

The John P. McGovern Endowed Lecture was part of a series of events UH hosted to commemorate NWC. Other events included art exhibits, luncheons with feminist speakers and discussions about the history of the conference.

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Zheng Chen received a $500,000 grant to develop artificial muscles and tendons to benefit people with disabilities. | Courtesy of Media Relations

People with disabilities who feel encumbered by bulky prosthetics may see relief from a UH professor’s research.

A $500,000 grant to develop artificial muscles was awarded to the UH Department of Mechanical Engineering by the National Science Foundation. Mechanical engineering assistant professor Zheng Chen, who will lead the research, said he thinks the biggest problem with prosthetics is that they’re too heavy and unwieldy.

“The goal is to help people with disabilities, like people who have gotten injured in war or natural disasters,” Chen said. “We’re trying to help them with affordable and compliant prosthetics.”

Chen said he was inspired to do the project when he was a faculty member at Wichita State University. He knew students and professors with disabilities and talked to them about their struggles. Simple things like picking up a fork was hard for them.

“I wanted to see if we could provide prosthetics that are compliant, lightweight and more comfortable for people with disabilities,” Chen said.

He found that dielectric elastomers were suitable for the project after researching materials that could help develop these humanlike muscles. This material consists of devices that are “sandwiched” between two electrodes, and when used as actuators can serve as soft power generators. It can be capable of converting an applied electric field into mechanical motion,  according to the US National Library of Medicine website.

Applying voltage to the elastomer can change the shape, like a human muscle does. The density is almost the same as a biological muscle, Chen said.

Nanotechnology will be used to make the material work and to construct artificial muscles and tendons, he said.

Chen developed an artificial muscle prototype and tendon structure. He used preliminary work and submitted the proposal at Wichita State University. Chen worked at WSU roughly four years, then returned to Houston to work at UH.

“This city is more interesting to me, so (my wife and I) decided to come back. We also missed our friends, and I found a good opportunity in this department” Chen said.

Chen said he will look for two doctorate students and two to three undergraduates willing to be part of this project.

Mechanical engineering doctorate Alicia Keow, said she joined Chen in Houston after she met him at WSU while seeking research experience.

“He was very friendly and helpful (when I met him), and he is always willing to help undergraduate students that are interested in research opportunities,” Keow said.

What Keow finds interesting about the project is that this can be the future of mechanical systems.

“I believe we should start moving away from the traditional mechanical system where everything is powered by gears and motors, because like a car, any part can fail anytime,”Keow said. “Because the system is so complicated, you have to take time to diagnose and find out which one is wrong.”

Keow said that sometimes it’s not the physical system that’s wrong, but rather the sensors. With this project, the dielectric elastomer is a sensor and can actuate if it’s well programmed.

Chen will start advancing his research.

Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering Pradeep Sharma said he is thrilled that Chen received this grant.

“The NSF Career is a highly competitive grant for junior faculty around the country,” Sharma said.

Approximately 40,000 proposals are received each year and only about 11,000 are funded. NSF also accounts for about one-fourth of federal support to academic institutions for basic research, according to the NSF website.

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Kaycie Rathburn (left) and Alyssa Chaplain sort through school supplies for elementary schools affected by Harvey after the College of Optometry and Pharmacy collected over $40,000 in supplies. | Courtesy of Kaycie Rathburn

After Hurricane Harvey damaged classrooms and interrupted lessons in the Houston area, graduates from the College of Pharmacy and the College of Optometry created a drive that raised more than $40,000 in supplies, which benefited 5,380 students and 150 teachers.

Kaycie Rathburn, second-year pharmacy student and president elect of American Pharmacist Association Academy of Student Pharmacists, came up with the idea for the drive before the flooding hit Houston.

“I was sitting on my parents’ couch during the hurricane and feeling very helpless watching the news,” Rathburn said. “There was so much going on and no way to get anywhere to help. There were a lot of drives going on but nothing for the students and schools.”

Members of APhA-ASP gathered to organize the drive. Lorenzo Anderson, second-year optometry student and co-coordinator of the drive, was in charge of the optometry students who participated.

“I decided to join forces and be part of the fundraiser because I felt for the schools that lost everything they had,” Anderson said. “Education has always been an important piece of my life, as I have many family members that are teachers. I saw them when I heard we could be of service and was eager to help.”

Surpassing expectations

The initial goal was to collect supplies inside the pharmacy and optometry buildings for a couple weeks and send it to Rockport where the hurricane directly hit, Rathburn said.

“After a few days, I got a call from an anonymous donor that said he would give us $1,000, and from there the drive started growing larger and larger,” Rathburn said. “That is when I decided to contact other schools around Rockport and smaller Houston schools that were not already being helped.”

From the 20 schools the students contacted, supplies were sent to the following:

• Five schools in Aransas Pass ISD – Rockport
• Bay City Education Speech Department – Bay City
• Creech Elementary – Katy
• The Galloway School – Friendswood
• Pilgrim Lutheran School – Houston
• St. Thomas’ Episcopal – Houston
• Carroll Elementary – Houston
• Shrine of the True Cross Catholic School – Dickinson

The group donated school supplies such as pencils, pens, crayons, markers, erasers, glue sticks, scissors, notebooks, composition books and folders, as well as snacks for after-school programs and new uniforms, Rathburn said.

The type of donations were based on the needs of the schools, Rathburn said. Some schools were not damaged, but their students were significantly impacted, so they received backpacks full of supplies. Others refused donations, because they said they were already being helped, Rathburn said.

“No monetary donations were given to any of the schools because we wanted to stay true to our supporters, and we promised to use their money for supplies,” Rathburn said. “My treasurer kept a spreadsheet with all the donations and exactly what we were spending. We ended up spending $0.86 over the amount donated.”

Second-year pharmacy student Shalon Saju Samuel, who was the treasurer during the drive, said ehe was in Dallas during Harvey but still wanted to help Houstonians in anyway possible.

“I felt the biggest way I could help was to keep track of the donations as they came in and to record the expenses as we used the money for the drive,” Samuel said.

Rathburn said they received over $8,000 in monetary donations and collected over $31,000 in supplies.

Aransas ISD was hit directly by the hurricane, so it received the biggest donation with around $25,000 worth of supplies, Rathburn said. The other nine schools received $1,000 to $1,500 donations of supplies, paper and classroom furnishings.

Joining the cause

Students who were part of the cause had their own reasons for joining.

“I don’t know if it was my studies or career that drove me to be a part of this,” said second-year pharmacy student Jaimy James. “Rather, it was the thing that led me to choose these paths that led me to help out with this drive. I just wanted to help people, especially the children that were affected by circumstances they had no control over.”

A majority of the students in both colleges, undergraduates as well as nursing and medical students from all over the country, donated to our drive, Rathburn said.

“When (Rathburn) first told me about the drive, I didn’t expect it to be a large ordeal, but suddenly our dining room was filling up with boxes from across the nation,” said second-year pharmacy student Callie Downs. “I quickly realized that what I thought was going to be a small drive would impact children all along the Texas coastline, and so I jumped in.”

Rathburn said they had about 100 schools hosting drives and had families who wanted to help from all over the country by sending boxes to them.

To spread the word, a flyer was posted on Facebook on Aug. 27 and shared by the members of the organization. On Sep. 2, the drive was extended to help Houston schools. On Sept. 23, the drive was closed but still received boxes in the mail through October, Rathburn said. By Oct. 10, they completed all the donation deliveries.

None of the students who participated in the drive were directly affected by Harvey, Rathburn said.

“We chose to do this because we were lucky and wanted to give back to our community and our state because it was heartbreaking,” Rathburn said.

Citywide effort

The graduates also received help from sponsors.

“We were sponsored by BB’s Café, which promoted the drive on their social media and put a donation box at all seven of their locations in Houston,” Rathburn said. “The owner of Crystals Children and Teacher Supplies, Mrs. Chow, helped us get the majority of supplies with the monetary donations and gave us 30 to 50 percent off everything.”

BigTex Storage provided a free storage unit from September to November to keep the donations. Cedra Pharmacy provided a drop-off location and a large donation to help buy supplies for two science classrooms at St. Thomas’ Episcopal School , Rathburn said.

“I was able to accompany Kaycie on many deliveries, and at each school, we were greeted with smiles and thanks,” Downs said. “We tried to give the students a little piece of what Harvey took from them, and I think we did just that. This is just the beginning for Texas, but I know that generous hearts are always willing to lend a helping hand.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misstated Kaycie Rathburn’s position in the American Pharmacist Association Academy of Student Pharmacists. She is president elect, not president. It also misstated Shalon Saju Samuel’s pronouns. 

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Water during the outage was cold and discolored. | Thomas Dwyer/The Cougar

Every afternoon, pre-business freshman Maranda Meserole finishes classes and returns to Cougar Village I to make her usual pot of coffee. On Oct. 31, brown water coming out of her bathroom sink interrupted those plans.

A deliberate hot water outage at the residence hall introduced discolored water into Meserole’s and dozens of other residents’ sinks.

Despite the outage’s emergency nature, UH Facilities Services knew its extent and timing, according to an internal Emergency Outage Notification report. Still, residents were not notified about the outage or its possible effects, which include brown water.

Meserole said she learned about the brown water on Snapchat.

“My friends said it was brown more than yellow, and when I finally got back to my dorm, it was kind of clear at the beginning, and then it was super yellow,” she said. “It was gross. It wasn’t like bits or pieces or anything. It was just discolored water.”

She said she heard from students living in nearby rooms and her resident assistant that Facilities Management was flushing out the plumbing, but residents received no official notification or explanation for the brown water.

“I wish they would have told us, like if anything, that morning,” Meserole said. “Send out like an email, ‘Hey by the way, the water is going to turn brown at some point.’ It would have been nice to know.”

Executive Director of Student Housing and Residential Life Don Yackley said the water system remained disinfected during the outage.

The residence hall’s hot water system was shut off from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to repair the building’s mixing valve, which combines hot and cold water, mechanical supervisor Steve Lopez said. The valve had caused issues with the building’s hot water for three to four weeks before it was repaired, he said.

Now, the building’s hot water should have no issues.

Typically, with routine maintenance, the mixing valve should not create issues. Lopez said the building’s mixing valve will be maintained on a regular basis going forward to prevent such extended outages.

Yackley said outages such as this one often allow sediment in the pipes to temporarily discolor the water.

“Once the water system is back to normal, this discoloration is flushed out of the system and returns to normal,” Yackley said. “Taste, odor and color — while important aspects of water quality — are not the ones that are of major concern so long as the system remains disinfected.”

Regardless of repairs or outages in campus buildings, harmless water discolored by sediment may appear at any point, Lopez said. Running the tap for four to five minutes should clear it up, he said.

UH experienced brown water throughout campus last September, and for days students relied on food trucks and limited dining hall menus for meals.

Moody Towers Dining Commons was also closed most of Oct. 21, 2016, due to a hot water outage, and dining services directed students to dine at Cougar Woods Dining Commons in the meantime. Moody reopened that evening at 9:30 p.m.

Moody was not closed last Tuesday in relation to the hot water outage at Cougar Village I, but students were left uninformed and relied on talking to others for information.

“Typically when there is a planned outage, the building staff send an email to residents letting them know about a situation,” Yackley said. “In some cases, emergency repairs happen, and there is not time to send out the notice before the work happens. We typically try and send notification even after the issue has been resolved.”

Yackley and Lopez said mineral buildup in Cougar Village I and other campus buildings can happen occasionally but should not be expected.

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Friends of Haiti, a UH student organization, travels to the Caribbean country every year to provide its people with medical supplies. | Courtesy of Friends of Haiti

The UH organization Friends of Haiti, which aims to raise awareness about health care in Haiti and explore the country’s culture, spends the each school year planning for group of students to bring medical aid to the third largest country in the Caribbean.

“The club was created four years back, and a group went to Haiti on a medical mission,” said Friends of Haiti President and human nutrition and foods senior Likhitha “Kiki” Bodi. “We’ve continued to run this organization, recruiting students and providing them with great medical experience and at the same time providing care for Haiti.”

Initially inspired by the widespread devastation following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the organization strives to visit the country with medical professionals, supplies and students to set up mobile clinics in four to five of the lowest socioeconomic communities, Bodi said.

The earthquake demolished 50 health centers, part of Haiti’s teaching hospital and the Ministry of Health. Shortly after, the country experienced its first cholera outbreak in a century, which further disrupted the Haiti’s health care system, according to the U.S Agency for International Development.

According to USAID, Haiti faces several challenges, including:

• A weak health care system: About 40 percent of the population lack access to essential health and nutrition services.
• A funding environment: The government does not spend much on health. In fact, Haitian’s heavily depend on international funding to provide health care services.
• Human resources: There is a gap in qualified health professionals and people, as few as six per 10,000.
• Health infrastructure: It was a struggle before the 2010 earthquake and worsened after. There is a shortage in health care and storage facilities, access to electricity, clean water and sanitation systems.

Life-changing experiences

The trip to Haiti costs $1,800 and covers airfare, food, transportation and any other expenses during the course of their 10-day stay. Friends of Haiti usually brings between 15 and 20 students to Haiti, including pre-med students who are interested in gaining hands-on medical experience.

“When we started setting up the clinics, I guess I always assumed we would have a really nice facility, but we always had classrooms,” said biomedical sciences senior and FOH Associative Vice President Navya Kartha, who went to Haiti in 2015. “It was really cool to see people’s creativity when we only had a small room to put chairs and desks together to create a clinic.”

FOH External Vice President and biomedical sciences senior Joshua Chakranarayan said being able to interact with the kids was the most memorable part of his experience. He learned from Haitians’ humility and perspective, he said.

“Their attitude was so different and much more positive than ours — I think that’s what I took away from it,” Chakranarayan said. “Haiti is one of the worst-off countries in the Western Hemisphere financially (and) economically, but you wouldn’t understand that just by interacting with the people there, because they’re so positive and grateful. Once you go there, you want to keep on going back there because they’re so thankful for everything.”

Long-term help

In addition to changing the students’ lives, the organization’s trips to Haiti had strong impacts on the country, too, Bodi said.

Through the collection of medicines, vitamins and other miscellaneous supplies, Friends of Haiti was able to assist the country’s people beyond their visit.

“Our students are mostly interested in doing the clinical things,” Bodi said. “We get to shadow physicians, and this year we gave multivitamins to the patients. We gave them a six-month supply. The living conditions are really hard for them. It’s not like the United States, so we try to learn their culture and their way of living so that we can treat them medically.”

Friends of Haiti is currently planning its next trip.

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Conservative writer David Horowitz spoke to a packed audience about “terror networks” at the Science and Engineering Classroom Building on Thursday night as dozens of other students protested the speaker outside.

The protests, organized by a coalition of progressive student groups, shouted “Racists — off our campus,” among other chants.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center, which the speaker leads, last month named the University of Houston one of the top ten schools that support terrorism. Thursday’s event was organized by the UH chapter of Young America’s Foundation.

The room reached capacity before Horowitz’s speech began and the fire marshal prohibited anymore attendees from entering, including reporters from The Cougar. Shortly after the event started, dozens of protesters left marching, opening up room inside, but security did not want anyone entering after Horowitz began speaking.

Posters and signs were placed around campus in advance of Horowitz’s speech, some claiming ties between terrorist organization Hamas and Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP. A progressive student coalition consisting of members from SJP, Students for Democratic Society and other political organizations on campus organized the planned protest in a day, said pharmacy graduate student Sarah Zidat.

Zidat said she and other protesters listened to the introduction of Horowitz’s speech before Zidat stood up and yelled, “David, your bigotry is not welcome on campus, and we do not welcome your presence here either.”

Protesters from inside the Science and Engineering Classroom Building marched outside, meeting up with dozens more, and all began chanting “Racists — off our campus.” Then they marched down the side of the Science and Engineering Classroom Building also shouting “Undocumented — Unafraid” and “Black Lives Matter.”

The group of protesters stopped in front of the Science and Engineering Research Center and shifted between shouting their chants and speaking aloud why they stand for Palestine.

One student, history doctoral candidate Patrick Higgins, spoke during the protest about the significance of Thursday being the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, a message from the British government in 1917 that gave support for a home for Jews in Palestine.

Higgins, who is affiliated with Students for Democratic Society, said they are always willing to raise their voices on behalf of Palestinian people. He said he rejects Horowitz calling the university a part of a “terror network.”

“He wants to conflate the T word, knowing the social atmosphere of this country, knowing about anti-Arab bigotry,” Higgins said. “He wants to conflate that with this buzzword that he uses, terrorism, and we say no.”

Paul Schnee, who works in the automobile industry and just moved from Los Angeles to Houston in May, came to watch Horowitz speech. Schnee said he has seen Horowitz speak many times before, mostly through attending luncheons in L.A. put on by the David Horowitz Freedom Center called “Wednesday Morning Club.”

“He is one of the premier voice that speaks and writes against the left,” Schnee said. “Anything he has to say on the matter is worth listening too.”

Schnee said Horowitz’s conversion from a “man of the left” to a conservative in the 1980s is probably equal to “St. Paul on the road to Damascus.” He said he expected a protest to break out, and they usually happen when Horowitz speaks at college campuses.

“Because, particularly, what they want to do is shut down free speech,” Schnee said. “They’re all for free speech, just as long as they are the ones doing the talking.”

History senior Brant Roberts is an officer with SJP and spoke out at the protest against Horowitz. Roberts said Horowitz is not welcome to speak on campus because he is not willing to engage in a dialogue.

“It creates an environment where our students will feel endangered, and could give rise to more talks like this who are clearly white supremacists,” Roberts said. “We just don’t want to give a free space for white supremacists to come here, and to feel as if this is a place for them to come and speak.”

Video by Corbin Ayres/The Cougar

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Members of a collaboration between UH and UT’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center research how the disease affects minorities. | Courtesy of Lorraine Reitzel

For chair of the Department of Psychological, Health and Learning Sciences at the University of Houston College of Education Lorraine Reitzel, it is important to promote diversity in science.

UH has formed a collaboration, known as U-HAND, with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to create a program to reduce cancer disparities. Reitzel is one of the partnership directors.

“It really would have the ability to change people’s lives,” Reitzel said. “If we can get more people into cancer disparities research, then we have the opportunity to affect the lives of many people that they will ultimately touch throughout their career.”

This joint endeavor between these institutions is dedicated to the elimination of cancer inequities experienced by Hispanics and African-Americans through prevention efforts that reduce social and physical cancer risk factors, Reitzel said.

Reitzel said U-HAND’s objective is to create excellence in educational programming, and innovation in research will be focused in two key ethnic Houston communities: the Third Ward and the East End.

“We can help add to the next generation of scientists, public health people and folks in medicine who can have an influence on facilitating health equity with regard to cancer,” Reitzel said.

A personal connection

Reitzel’s mother was never able to quit smoking, so their family was constantly exposed to secondhand smoke, she said. Both of Reitzel’s parents died of complications and conditions related to tobacco use, and Reitzel herself is a cancer survivor. Reitzel said she believes this created a personal connection between herself and her research.

“It doesn’t matter who you are. Cancer doesn’t care who you are,” Reitzel said.

Prior to her start of employment at UH in 2013, Reitzel worked for the department of health disparities research at MD Anderson since 2005. She met Dr. Lorna McNeill, and the two have been working together since 2006 to demonstrate cancer disparities related to tobacco, diet and physical activity.

For the past eight months, a group from UH and a group of from MD Anderson met every week for a few hours to begin applying for a grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Partnerships to Advance Cancer Health Equity.

This is a four-year grant that enables faculty members from institutions with underserved health disparity populations, like UH, and NCI-designated cancer centers, like MD Anderson, to train scientists from diverse backgrounds in cancer research to effectively deliver cancer advances to underserved communities.

Reitzel said this process was long and thorough and was not definitive until the NCI had sent a notice. U-HAND received the notice on Sept. 22.

“This was a big application, and it involved a lot of both universities,” Reitzel said.

Targeting racial inequity

Reitzel added that another intent of the program is to cut down racial lines. African-American men, she said, are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer and die from prostate cancer, and African-American women are more likely to have negative outcomes as a result of breast cancer compared to white women.

“While black men and white men smoke at the same rate, black men are much less likely to quit smoking relative to white men,” Reitzel said. “That creates a disparity whereby when more black men continue to smoke, they are more likely to get cancers that are related to tobacco.”

Reitzel said U-HAND hopes to capitalize on the fact that UH has a diverse student body. There is a need for science to reflect the population it is interested in helping, and current science mostly reflects white men, she said.

“Most research that society hears about is just broad generalizations,” said accounting sophomore Emely Martinez. “By looking into specific racial groups, we can bring more awareness to cancer and the severity of it in society today.”

U-HAND will review publications from undergraduate to postdoctoral students coming out of the of educational and research programming it provides.

“We feel like that broad education is really the best for preparation in your career,” Reitzel said.

The grant also provides a stipend for students working in the program.  

“We’re hopeful that students we reach go on to graduate school careers and do their own research in cancer prevention or in other cancer-related health disparities,” Reitzel said.

Student involvement

The grant also funds two pilot projects. UH’s pilot project principal investigator is Daphne Hernandez, an early stage investigator at the UH Department of Health and Human Performance. Reitzel said this grant provides Hernandez with two years of funding to research the correlation between childhood stress and cancer risks in Hispanic adults.

“This is a great opportunity to get hands-on experience that will set students apart when applying for graduate school,” Hernandez said. “They will see different arenas of research that they are not exposed to in class.”

The other pilot project will be conducted by researchers at M.D. Anderson and will focus on interventions for African-American men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer but have been recommended to watch and wait before receiving treatment.

“It’s a slow developing cancer, and it’s possible that not everyone needs immediate chemotherapy and other treatment,” Reitzel said. “You could live out your life, and it wouldn’t progress quickly, but knowing you have cancer is a huge stressor for people.”

M.D. Anderson will work with African-American couples to provide them with an intervention that attempts to decrease their stress and risk of cancer.

Reitzel said that the program’s ripple down effect will benefit those involved and those affected by the research.

“The idea is that we want people to learn about aspects of cancer research then eventually they’ll go and be independent on their own,” Reitzel said.

U-HAND is in the process of creating an informational website about the program, but for now they welcome any all inquiries on the group’s Twitter page.

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“Cancer research aims to break down racial barriers to health” was originally posted on The Daily Cougar