Design by Brighton Kamen Student Publications

HC2 October 21, 2016 technique

HOMECOMING

Treching through the jungle

with the homecoming chair
SAMIRA BANDARU

ASSISTANT LIFE EDITOR

The absurdly warm weather
that has come upon Techs campus is very apt for this years tropical Homecoming theme. This
years Homecoming looks forward
to a multitude of jungle-themed
events from Canopy Cake Decorating to a Wild Rafting Challenge, as well as annual traditions,
like Tech Trivia, the Mini 500,
TEAM Buzz and Mock Rock,
among many others.
This year we generally kept
the same events as last year,
though giving new life to some,
said Kaleigh Watters, a third-year
BA and Homecoming chair. My
two favorites in this category are
the Homecoming Kickoff Carnival and Obstacle Course.
To kick off Homecoming,
the Carnival, which was revamped and will be emphasized
this year, will take place near
the Campanile so that it is easily
accessible and visible to everyone.
I hope that this becomes a
part of Homecoming culture and
will grow to be as anticipated as
some of our other large events,
Watters said.

The Obstacle Course was created with the vision of the jungle
theme in mind and will replace
last years relay race.
We really wanted to bring the
jungle to Tech students, Watters
said. As they army-crawl through
the IC Lawn, TrECHing toward
an inflatable course, I hope they
are able to experience what we envisioned in February.
Every year, I think there is
excitement around events such
as Scavenger Hunt which is a
little tricky, so get ready! and
the Homecoming Concert, Watters continued. Im personally excited for all of Thursdays events,
the Homecoming Carnival and
Homecoming Concert.
Both are events where we all
get to feel a part of this tradition,
as even students who arent affiliated with teams get to meet people they may not have otherwise
met as they play games and vote
for their favorite booths or, after a
late lab, experience a convenient,
free and dope concert amongst
friends and peers.
One of the main issues that
was brought up among SCPCs
Homecoming Committee last
year was the idea of inclusivity
on campus and how Homecom-

Photo by John Nakano Student Publications

Participants anxiously line up, waiting for the famous Mini 500 tricycle race to begin.
The Mini 500 race is a long-standing Tech tradition that has been around since 1969.

ing in past years has seemingly

been attended by predominately
Greek participants.
I think that for me, as someone who is not Greek and coming
in as Homecoming Chair, it was
easier to simply be conscious of
this issue and perspective, Watters said. As we began the process
of looking at past events and making decisions about them, we had

discussions about how students

who werent affiliated with teams
could experience them, hopefully
sparking interest in competing in
the future.
Watters believes that the
Homecoming Committee has
made some small steps in the creation of the Carnival event.
I hope that this is something
that is built upon each year, Wat-

ters said. While there is still work

to be done, from better communication to the non-Greek communities or maybe new events
tailored to those groups, I think
that this is something that we are
excited to expand upon.
For Watters, one of the challenges that the Homecoming
Committee faced this year was
See INTRO, page HC7

HOMECOMING

SCPC
POLLY OUELLETTE

CONTRIBUTING WRITER
While normally West Campuss Couch Park is not occupied
by more than a handful of students either studying or getting
some fresh air, the deserted landscape will soon be full of shouting,
whooping and singing individuals
and one Kid Ink.
This wildness, true to Homecomings TrECHing through the
Jungle theme, will accompany
the annual homecoming concert.
The concert is organized
through the combined efforts of
many individuals and groups,
but the Student Center Programs
Council (SCPC) does the most
legwork in pulling the event together. Last year, they brought
B.o.B. to campus for the free concert, and in 2014 they managed to
procure Hoodie Allen.
SCPC has several committees, and many of them work on
Homecoming events and the logistics that are required to pull
together each event during the
busy week. There is an entire committee dedicated to on-campus
concerts, which is currently led
by Jianna Caronan, second-year

technique October 21, 2016 HC3

finalizes concert lineup

BME. The group began making

preparations as early as last fall for
this years concert.
In the spring, several surveys
were sent out to students starting
in April, focusing on a variety of
different artists and genres. SCPC
began reaching out to artists, but
they were continually unable to
secure someone to perform for a

variety of reasons such as availability, budgets and other logistical conflicts.

Last year, our first offer letter
went to B.o.B, he accepted, and
the rest is history, said Samantha Holloway, the second-time
president of SCPC and fourthyear BA. This year, the planning
of the Homecoming concert has

been much more complicated

and challenging.
SCPC decided to change the
concert style from one big act to
two smaller acts. This was done so
they could provide two different
musical styles to cater to students
who have different musical tastes
and combine the concerts in a
festival-style lineup.

Photo by John Nakano Student Publications

Students get hyped at another years Homecoming Concert. Tech students may attend the
concert as well as bring one guest along for free, as long as they remember their buzzcards.

In August, Kid Ink accepted

Techs offer. A popular hip-hop
artist, Kid Ink is best known
for Promise ft. Fetty Wap and
Show Me ft. Chris Brown. He
was nominated for a MTV Europe Music Award in 2014 for
Best Push Act.
Soon after, Bebe Rexha agreed
to perform and began the contracting process with SCPC. Bebe
Rexha is an electropop singer,
songwriter and producer. Unfortunately, during the announcement of the artists on Oct. 12,
students were met with some
disappointing news: Bebe Rexha
had backed out the day before
to host the European Music
Awards instead.
This unexpected change of
plans left the SCPC staff scrambling, looking for a second artist
to play at the concert. A few days
after the artist announcement,
artist Timeflies signed a contract
to perform on Oct. 20. The lineup
had finally been set.
Just as we had to do earlier
this semester, in the interest of
time, we selected the best choice
as a committee considering the
student bodys preference of genre
as well as the artists compatSee MUSIC, page HC7

MR. + MRS. GT 2016

HC4 October 21, 2016 technique

HOMECOMING

HOMECOMING

ERIKA CLASKY

Joseph mycock

Sahas Singh

Kyle Woumn

DAndre Waller

technique October 21, 2016 HC5

WEATHErlY LANGSETT

Shane Mudrinich

Amy Hart

ANDREW PERRY

Sarah dennis
Design by Brighton Kamen Student Publications

HC6 October 21, 2016 technique

HOMECOMING

T eam

buzz celebrates
20 th anniversary

HANNA WARLICK
STAFF WRITER

On Oct. 22, TEAM Buzz celebrates its 20th year as an institute-wide community service day.
The day starts with check-in at
8:30 a.m. and breakfast provided
by Waffle House with Blue Don-

key Coffee. A guest speaker from

Georgia Works will speak before
approximately 1500 people break
off into 32 projects around the
metro Atlanta area.
The day ends with lunch from
Papa Johns and a festival including Buzz, the Ramblin Wreck,
music and opportunities to connect with other service organiza-

tions on campus. TEAM Buzzs

Executive
Director,
Turner
Ozmer, fourth-year ISYE, along
with a team of 13 members, has
been prepping for this event since
late November 2015.
The biggest challenge is always getting the word out. Tech
students are incredibly talented
and selfless, always jumping at the

Photo by Sho Kitamura Student Publications

The Campanile is bustling in the morning with TEAM Buzz preparations. Volunteers representing organizations from all around campus come together participate projects around Atlanta.

opportunity to give back to their

community, Ozmer said. If
people know TEAM Buzz is happening, know how easy and lowcommitment one day it is to
get involved and see the incredible
impact that we can have on this
city and school we call home, then
getting the best volunteers will
follow naturally.
The TEAM in TEAM Buzz
stands for Tech Enhancing Atlanta Metropolitan. Since its inception, the philanthropy initiative
has seen dramatic changes in the
Atlanta area.
Over the last few years, weve
been moving towards projects
that emphasize the long-term,
sustainable growth of our city,
rather than quick band-aid fixes
to the problems Atlanta faces,
Ozmer said. Some examples of
these projects include creating
educational resources, planting
community gardens, environmental cleanup work, and even working with animal shelters such as
Good Mews.
The focus last year was to
choose service partnerships that
would be good for the long-term
growth and development of the
local area. Building on that, this
year the emphasis has been on

creating servant leaders, and

growing this schools already
incredible passion for service.
Ozmer added. The overall goal of
the organization is to simply emphasize service. There are plenty of
service organizations and opportunities on campus, but TEAM
Buzz stands out in its scope.
It brings together primarily students, but also faculty, staff
and alumni for a short period of
time to make long-lasting contributions. With everything eating
away at students time and attention, TEAM Buzz aims to take
only one day to give students a
way to get involved and give back
to the surrounding community.
Techs motto is Progress and
Service. Ozmer said the school
has taught him that one cant have
one without the other: Progress, when not oriented towards
service, is useless. TEAM Buzz
is Techs largest day of service
and as such serves as the primary view the community gets of
Tech students.
Regardless of what they say is
in the news, or how many wins we
get on Saturdays, what our neighbors think of us will ultimately
come down to how we have served
them, Ozmer said.

HOMECOMING

INTRO

FROM PAGE HC2

coordinating with other organizations on campus.

While it is exciting to have a
hand in everything Homecoming, learning the best way to reach
organizations for both receiving
and distributing information is
still something that overwhelms
me. Im excited to see what transferred knowledge from this year
and technology such as OrgSync
can do for this in future years
though, Watters said.
Among all the competition between organizations on campus in
the many events that Homecoming has to offer, it is easy to get
caught up in the rivalry.
While Homecoming is known
for friendly competition within
brackets, late nights for competing teams and even hopes of the
chance to go down on the field at
halftime of the game, I think we
tend for forget that those serve as a
way for us to feel bonded as a campus where we can take time to
experience campus as more than a
place where youre crossing fingers
for internships or cramming for
exams, Watters said.
Homecoming is a week where
everyone knows something new
yet time-honored is happening,
and I really do think that this
change of pace and new topic of
conversation is a great example
of students sharing memories
and encouragement with just
enough trash talk in the mix.
Watters said. At the end of the
week, well be in white and gold,
glad to have been a part of it, and
hoping for the W against Duke,
or at least more sleep next week.

MUSIC

FROM PAGE HC3

ibility with Kid Ink, Caronan

said. Timeflies stood out as the
best option, and were just so
happy that they were able to accommodate us before heading off
on tour.
Timeflies is a pop band composed of Rob Resnick and Cal
Shapiro. Just like many modern
artists, they started out covering
songs on YouTube and quickly
rose to fame from there. Their
most popular song right now is
Once in a While.
Another complication to
this years concert organization
process was the closure of Tech
Green, which has yet to reopen.
The space underwent construction to improve turf and drainage,
and the introduction of a new species of grass, which needs time to
properly take root, led to the space
being cordoned off by fences. This
space is usually reserved for the
concert, but it was announced
that the Green would not be reopened until the Fall 2017.
However, with the continued
closure, not only did it delay our
artist selection process, it also
added more planning on our part.
With Tech Greens closure, we lost
artists to other gigs because we
didnt have a secure concert location, which was necessary before
making any offers, Caronan said.
Hollway added, Not having
Couch Park confirmed until late
June really slowed our planning
momentum because we couldnt
send any offer letters without
a location.
In addition, this year SCPC
was excited to look for artists in a

higher price bracket than the past

years. Unfortunately, this also introduced its own set of problems.
Looking for artists in a higher
price range means more big-name
people, but it also means working
with artists with limited availability and more demands such as
larger production requirements,
Holloway said.
The students also had to account for the possibility of bad
weather; arrangements were made
so that if storms came to ruin the
fun, everything could be moved
inside to the Ferst Theater.
The Homecoming Concert
kicked off Homecoming Week on

technique October 21, 2016 HC7

Thursday, Oct. 20 at the Couch
Park Burger Bowl Field. The show
started with Techs own student
opener, Linear. Students also had
the chance to earn Homecoming
points for their team.
After all the obstacles weve
faced, were really proud of what
weve been able to put together
considering the circumstances.
Im confident that this is the best
and biggest Homecoming concert
weve had, and were so excited to
share it with all of the students,
Caronan said of her feelings about
the event day finally arriving. We
hope that theyre as excited as we
are and have a great time because

at the end of the day, this concert

is for them.
Holloway notes that this year,
SCPC has really learned how to
bounce back and think critically
as obstacles are thrown at us. Im
lucky to be a part of a team that
has remained positive through it
all, always keeping in mind the
interests of the student body.
Through every decision that
was made, SCPC has done everything in our power to make this
the best show for our students.
Students can attend the concert for free with one guest, and
admission will be based on each
students buzzcard.

Photo by John Nakano Student Publications

Students dance at a previous years Homecoming Concert. SCPCs Homecoming Concert is

one of Techs most anticipated Homecoming events each year, and this years artist is Kid Ink.

HC8 October 21, 2016 technique

HOMECOMING

Welcome to the
Jungle
Window Display Contest
Friday, Oct. 21,
3pm
Powderpuff Cheerleading
Friday, Oct. 21,
10am-4pm

Iron Buzz
Sunday, Oct. 23,
9am-12pm

Mock Rock
Monday, Oct. 24,
7pm

Talent Show
Tuesday, Oct. 25,
7pm-9pm

Wild Rafting Challenge

Wednesday, Oct. 26,
9am-12pm

Canstruction
Wednesday, Oct. 26,
2pm-5pm
Ugly Man on Campus
Oct. 24-Oct. 28

Predator vs. Prey

Oct. 24-Oct. 28
Mini 500 Tricycle Race
Friday, Oct. 28,
5pm
Ramblin Wreck Parade
Saturday, Oct. 29

Homecoming Game
Saturday, Oct. 29

Design by Ansley Marks Student Publications

October 21, 2016Volume 102, Issue 11nique.net

ENTERTAINMENT

OPINIONS

technique Offermans ode to wood

News 2

Opinions 5

p9 LTE: Electric Buses

Entertainment 9

p7

Sports 16

COMMUNITY-FAVORITE SHEEP RETURN TO TECH p3

NEWS

Top L: Photo courtesy of Offermans Woodshop; Top R: Photo by Jerod Ray Student Publications; Above: Photo courtesy of GT Communications

SPORTS

Despite little attention, Mills off to hot start

CASEY MILES
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
In the Paul Johnson era, it has
become exceedingly rare for true
freshmen to start games, unless
they are filling in an injury-riddled role. However, this year, one
freshman has burst onto the scene
and proven his worth as a starter:
B-back Dedrick Mills.
Mills started getting mentioned early this year, before the
season even started. After enrolling early and starting school in
the spring semester of 2016, he

made his name known. Throughout the spring, many a teammate

and coach would mention him as
someone to look out for in the fall
and definitely someone to look
out for to compete for the starting
spot at B-back.
Mills quickly showed that
he could live up to the hype. In
his first game, he capped off the
game-winning drive against Boston College with a 4-yard touchdown run.
His first touchdown would
turn out to be one of many. Mills
leads Tech in touchdowns and
rushing, but he is not just leading

Tech in many offensive categories;

hes almost topping the ACC and
the country. In total scoring, Mills
is third in the ACC behind FSU
kicker Ricky Aguayo and Louisvilles Heisman candidate Lamar
Jackson. He is also ranked sixth
nationally in touchdowns scored,
courtesy of ESPN.com. That is
no small feat for someone who
was playing against high schoolers
this time last year.
When asked about how he has
adapted to college play so quickly,
Mills responded, I feel pretty
confident. I mean, its pretty
much the same stuff I did in high

school, so it aint nothing to come

from doing that to bring it up here
and do the same thing but do it
twice as hard. It is this straightforward mindset that allows Mills
to succeed.
His running style matches his
mentality. Mills does not dabble
with cuts and spin moves; he simply gets his job done.
His powerful, slogging style
allows him to succeed at pushing
through in short yardage situations, especially near the goal line.
So far this year, Mills has not
run around hapless safeties, nor
has he leaped over linebackers. He

has instead run straight through

his opponents. As the true freshman said earlier this week, If I
have to run into somebody, I do.
That style is what has allowed
Mills to have the most touchdowns out of any freshman in
the country. According to ESPN.
com, he is the No. 1 freshman in
the country when it comes to scoring touchdowns.
The only shocking thing about
Mills performance so far this season is the lack of recognition he
has received nationally relative to
his peers.

See MILLS, page 14

2 October 21, 2016 technique

// NEWS

technique

arrested one male, an 18-yearold from Atlanta, on charges of

loitering/prowling and obstructing an officer. A cell phone was
recovered from the arrestee.
Oct. 8 was also the night a
GTENS alert was issued at 10:18
p.m. in connection with armed
robbery suspects who had been
chased on campus by the Atlanta Police Department.

The Souths Liveliest College Newspaper

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:
Vidya Iyer
MANAGING EDITOR:
Nick Johnson
NEWS EDITOR:
Maura Currie
OPINIONS EDITOR:
David Raji
LIFE EDITOR:
Jonathan Long
ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR:
Kara Pendley
SPORTS EDITOR:
Harsha Sridhar
DESIGN EDITOR:
Brighton Kamen
PHOTO EDITOR:
Sara Schmitt
ONLINE EDITOR:
Kripa Chandran
WEB DEVELOPER:
Ross Lindsay
HEAD COPY EDITOR:
Alexis Brazier
EDITOR EMERITUS:
Brenda Lin
Founded in 1911, the Technique is the
student newspaper of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and is an official
publication of the Georgia Tech Board
of Student Publications. The Technique
publishes on Fridays weekly in the fall
and spring and biweekly in the summer.
ADVERTISING: Information can be
found online at nique.net/ads. The
deadline for reserving ad space is Friday
at 5 p.m. one week before publication. To
place a reservation, for billing information or for any other questions please email us at ad s@nique.net. You may reach
us at (404) 894-2830, Monday through
Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

COVERAGE REQUESTS : Requests for

coverage and tips should be submitted to
the Editor-in-Chief and/or the relevant
section editor.

Copyright 2016, Vidya Iyer, Editorin-Chief, and the Georgia Tech Board
of Student Publications. No part of this
paper may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the
Editor-in-Chief or from the Board of
Student Publications. The ideas expressed
herein are those of the individual authors
and do not necessarily represent the views
of the Board of Student Publications, the
students, staff or faculty of the Georgia
Institute of Technology or the University
System of Georgia. First copy free for
additional copies call (404) 894-2830

MAURA CURRIE
NEWS EDITOR

A LONG DAYS NIGHT

At approximately 9:30 p.m.,
on Oct. 8, an officer was patrolling the area of Fowler Street
NW and Fourth Street NW.
He observed two black males
walking north on Fowler near
the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity
parking lot; the men did not
appear to be students, and
furthermore
matched
the
descriptions put out in a Be on
the Look Out notification by
the Atlanta Police Department
in response to an armed robbery
in the area of Luckie Street and
Hunnicutt Street. The officer

RAISING THE BAR

An officer reported to the
Parking Office at 882 West
Peachtree Street on Oct. 11 to
respond to an incident of theft
of services.
An individual driving a silver
Toyota Scion was caught on surveillance video multiple times
in late September as he exited
his vehicle to manually lift the
gate at the Georgia Tech Hotel
parking deck, ostensibly to avoid
paying parking fees.
Through a check on the
Scions license registration, the
perpetrator was identified and
was asked to meet with the officer on Oct. 12 at the GTPD
Criminal Investigations Division. The perpetrator initially
confirmed that he had exited the

deck without paying multiple

times, though he grew apprehensive throughout the discussion and began speaking less.
The Parking Office declined
prosecution, and so the owner of
the vehicle (also a Tech student)
was simply fined and placed on
a blacklist from ever holding a
campus parking permit.
The student ended the discussion with an airing of grievances regarding Techs Parking
and Transportation department
and why he did not elect to have
a permit in the first place.
The officer reminded the
student that regardless of these
complaints, he should still park
legally on campus to prevent
further issues, to which the
student agreed before being on
his merry way.
ITS JUST MY PET SKUNK
GTPD reported to Maulding Residence Hall at approximately 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday in response to a suspicious
odor emanating from one of the
dormitory residences.
Upon arrival, the officer met
with the Resident Advisor (RA)
for the floor as well as the Hall

Director. The RA stated that

she had been conducting her
normal walk of the floor when
she detected the faint odor of
what she believed to be marijuana, and was further able to narrow the source of the scent down
to a single room.
The officer and RA visited the
room, where the odor of marijuana could in fact be smelled
both with the door closed and as
the door opened to reveal one of
the residents.
The resident was informed
that the scent of marijuana was
permeating the nasal cavities of
several people, and was asked if
the officer and RA could come
inside the room.
The student stated that they
were not welcome in his room
and that the other resident
was not present, which the RA
corroborated as having become
the case just minutes before.
With this stated, the officer
declined to further press the
situation. No arrests were made
and the officer left without further incident, staying only to
clarify with the RA how to
access the official GTPD report
on the incident at a later date.

Tech wins HEED award for excellence in

higher-educational diversity for third year
TRISTEN ALLEN
STAFF WRITER

The Institute Diversity department at Tech announced

that it was receiving the Insight into Diversity magazines
Higher Education Excellence in
Diversity (HEED) award for the
third year in a row.
Tech is one of 82 universities to receive the award this
year, and will be featured in Insight into Diversitys Nov. 2016
issue. Dr. Archie Ervine, vice
president for Institute Diversity,
expressed pride in receiving this
years award, saying that [2016]
has been a landmark year for
the Institute, from the most
diverse freshman class in Georgia Techs history to the launch
of the Black Student Experience

Task Force and Gender Equity

Initiatives. But there is still more
work to do.
On the selection process, the
publisher of Insight into Diversity, Lenore Pearlstein, said that
we take a holistic approach to
reviewing each application in
deciding who will be named a
HEED Award recipient.
Our standards are high, and
we look for institutions where
diversity and inclusion are woven into the work being accomplished every day across their
campus.
When asked about how
Institute Diversity works with
student government, Dr. Ervine
highlighted how the department
seeks to work on issues the Student Government Association
(SGA) highlights as important
to the student body. He also

discussed how students are the

lifeblood of the institution and
that he knows Nagela Nukuna,
undergraduate student body
president, very well.
Dr. Ervine explained that
Institute
Diversity
works
with multiple organizations
throughout campus, with SGA
representing only a small portion of the collaboration the
department participates in.
Declining to name any specific program as the most important or impactful, Dr. Ervine
emphasized Institute Diversitys
focus on recruiting a diverse
group of students as the most
important activity it undertakes.
Dr. Ervine expressed hope
that we continue to emphasize
the need to make the campus
community more supportive of
everybody thats earned their

way into Tech. I have a theory

that everyone at Tech has earned
their way into being there.
Dr. Ervine also noted that
diversity is not limited to
ethnicity or background, saying that there is an intellectual
diversity perspective that is absolutely critical to creativity,
innovation and productivity.
Absolutely. Intellectual diversity
that is academic.
Continuing, Dr. Ervine said:
I think that, you know, in order
for us to be a great university,
we have to be more than just
one discipline. So, I believe that
the great challenges of our time
require expertise from many
disciplines across campus, not
just our technical ones.
On Techs support for diversity in its faculty, Dr. Ervine said
that we have a very aggressive
See HEED, page 4

sliver

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long farewell aufweidersein and good frickity frickin bye
build a wall, break down the wall, build the wall again but this
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and the stale fiber bar whispering in my ear
W R OO N G
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Georgia Techs Journal of the Arts and Literature

art, n. - The expression or application of creative skill and
imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting, drawing, or
sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their
beauty or emotional power.
It is art that makes life, makes interest,
makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of
its process.
Max Eastman

technique October 21, 2016 3

// NEWS

ach week, this section of News will

include the coverage of dierent
aspects of bills that passed
through Student Government This will
include the Undergraduate House of
Representatives, Graduate Student
Senate and the Executive Branch of
both government bodies.

would keep them at the end of the

season. The club representative informed her that they would stay
with the team, meaning that they
would not be a giveaway, and
could be funded.

HyTech Racing
Taal Tadka Conference
Yellow Jacket Fencing Tournaments
Roller Hockey Club
Ballroom Dance Competition
SHPE National Conference

AMOUNT
$5,631.72
$1,000.00
$1,259.00
$1,418.69
$835.40
$4,800.00

WATER BOTTLE WALK-OFF

The Roller Hockey Club
sought funding for equipment, including the teams league registration, pucks, goalie wheels, laces, a
team water cooler and team water

bottles. The team plays at the intercollegiate level and at the local
level in a league in Alpharetta.
Representative Scott asked if
the team water bottles would stay
with the team, or if the players

YOU BETTER SHAPE UP

Without a representative present, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers asked for
funding for registration fees and
flights to their national conference in Seattle. The Society of
Hispanic Professional Engineers
is a national organization and the
largest Latin American student
organization at Tech.
Since there was not a representative from the organization, Rep.
Daigle was concerned passing the
bill would set a dangerous precedent, sending the message that
UHR will vote on a bill, even if
no one from the organization
shows up to present it. However,
another representative added that
they had passed bills without an
organizational representative present before, and it is not explicitly
required that a representative attend the meeting.

MAURA CURRIE

less than a minute before it was

estimated to touch down and
have not been able to reestablish
communications.
Though this does not bode
well, ESA engineers will begin
running tests to determine why
communications might have been
lost and see what could be done to
possibly make Schiaparelli usable.
Other agencies, such as NASA,
have attempted to make contact
with Schiaparelli with no success. The Opportunity rover was
supposed to capture an image of
Schiaparelli as it neared the martian surface but only captured
cosmic ray distortion.
Key data might be derived
from the Trace Gas Orbiter,
which functioned as Schiaparellis
mothership and was establishing a stable orbit as the probe approached the surface of Mars.

Even if Schiaparelli is not salvageable, the Trace Gas Orbiter

will remain in orbit and study
the behavior of certain gases,
including methane, in Mars
atmosphere.
Should Schiaparelli be confirmed as lost, it will have been
the second failure in as many attempts by the ESA to land on
Mars; Beagle-2, another probe,
also failed to land in 2003.
The ESA plans to launch a
larger, six-wheeled rover and land
it on Mars in 2021, and maintains that Schiaparelli functioned
as a technology demonstration
and test in building up to this
larger rover.
However, funding for the future rover is not yet secured and
may be in jeopardy in light of the
continuing failures of martian
ESA programs.

LINDSEY PLOUSSARD
STAFF WRITER

BILL SUMMARY
BILL

NEWS EDITOR

The European Space Agency

(ESA) fears that a Martian probe
called Schiaparelli, launched on
March 14 of this year, has been
irreparably damaged or lost in its
attempt to land on the red planet.
Schiaparelli was scheduled
to land on Mars Oct. 19, but
trackers lost the probes signal

GSS
15-0-0
15-0-0
15-0-0
14-1-0
9-0-0
10-0-0

UHR
32-0-0
39-0-1
38-0-1
40-0-0
40-0-0
38-2-1

Sheep return to Tech,

eating invasive kudzu
EMMANUEL HALDOPOULOS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

For the fifth consecutive semester, Techs campus population will

temporarily grow to thousands of
students and several hungry, fourlegged mammals. While students
have gone out of their way to visit
the guests, they are actually on
campus for an express purpose.
Kudzu, an ornamental shrub
initially brought from Japan to
the United States, was meant to
be used to counter erosion thanks
to its rapid and thorough growth.
However, the vine eventually
proved too much for the farmers
of the South after they discovered
that it could grow at an uncontrollable rate of 12 inches per day, or
roughly 60 feet per season. Kudzu
continues to grow in the southeast
at a rate of 150,000 acres, or 375
Tech campuses, annually.
Landscape professionals at
Tech have found a means of controlling the kudzu, albeit an unconventional one in the world of
landscaping. Three years ago,
Anne Boykin-Smith, master planner and landscape architect in
Techs Capital Planning office,
took notice of the overgrown kudzu just north of the MSE building.
After researching various methods
of removing kudzu that were environmentally friendly and avoided
potentially-harmful herbicides,
Boykin-Smith stumbled across
sheep as a means of removal.
Sheep are more selective in
terms of eating plants and will
tend to eat vines and leaves up
to four feet tall, Boykin-Smith
said. Goats will eat anything,
including shrubs and small trees
that you want to retain and will
reach taller, say five to six feet tall

and completely denude the area,

which is not the intent for this
area of campus. Having sheep on
campus is also fun, with students
taking selfies with them and remembering them.
Tech is not unique in using
sheep for groundskeeping purposes. Using sheep and goats to
remove invasive species/weeds
like kudzu, poison ivy and English ivy has been in practice for
years, Boykin-Smith said, with
inner city parks and private nature
reserves using them to remove
undergrowth. Sheep have been
used to graze grass at the Atlanta
airport in areas that are difficult
to access. Years ago, [University of
Georgia] used sheep to graze along
a stream that meanders through
campus because the vegetation
had gotten really thick and now
the stream is visible to the campus.
To my knowledge, Tech has used
herbicides to remove kudzu in
the past.
This years flock is set to address the continuing kudzu problem in the Biotech Quad, near the
Molecular Science building.
This area was allowed to overgrow because of a construction
project nearby, Boykin-Smith
said, that prevented our staff
from maintaining the area. A
high-functioning flock of sheep
can defoliate an acre of kudzu in
approximately three weeks, but
multiple treatments are required
to completely get rid of kudzu.
This semester may not be the
last that students can expect to see
the groundskeeping sheep.
We expect for the sheep to
be on our campus until Saturday,
Oct. 22nd, Boykin-Smith said.
[We] will evaluate whether or not
they need to return to the campus
in the late spring.

4 October 21, 2016 technique

HEED

FROM PAGE 2

agenda around leadership development at Georgia Tech for faculty and for staff. The provosts
office, just this last year, launched
a new initiative to give faculty
and academic leaders an opportunity to learn leadership skills and
traits that would make them better prepared to become academic
leaders such as chairs, associate
chairs, deans, administrators, vice
provosts, those kinds of things.
The HEED award emphasizes a
number of areas in its application,
including the overall demographics of the school, retention rates by
demographics, job advancement
opportunities for faculty as well
as the overall academic strength
and culture of the school. Dr. Ervine explained that many factors
which are not necessarily listed in
the application may come out in
the final stages of selection, when
candidates for the award are compared against one another to select
the most qualified institutions.
One specific criteria that becomes important in the last
stages of selection is a universitys
continuing commitment to improving diversity. Dr. Ervine explained that, since the publication
is always seeking to highlight new
universities, applicants have to
continually compete against their
peers and prove that they are worthy of receiving the award.
Dr. Ervine explained one of
these aspects of continuing improvement, saying that [Institute
Diversity is] positioned to continue to push and develop a vision for
an inclusive and welcoming campus community.
He tied this into the departments work with other campus
organizations, saying, You cant
do this alone. If youre working
alone, youve got a problem.
The HEED award selection process is overseen by Potomac Publishing, Inc., the
publisher of the INSIGHT into
Diversity magazine.

// NEWS

Tech pledges to be Healthy Campus Partner

JONATHAN JEFFREY
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Tech recently took the Healthy

Campus 2020 pledge to become a
Healthy Campus Partner, showing its commitment to improving
health on campus.
Created in 2012 by the American College Health Association
(ACHA), Healthy Campus 2020
comprises a set of objectives and
guidelines developed over a course
of five years to assist certified universities nationwide in creating
safer, healthier environments for
their students.
We are focusing on implementing a comprehensive, holistic, collaborative approach so
that our students and employees
can flourish and be fulfilled, said
Suzy Harrington, executive director at the Center for Community
Health and Well-Being.
ACHA makes available several
resources to help Tech and the
other 42 Health Campus Partners pursue the Healthy Campus
2020 goals.
The ACHA survey provides
the data to track the specific objectives, Harrington said. They
also have a fabulous website with
resources for those just starting a
health and well-being program to
those deeper into their initiatives.
At Tech, the Office of Health
Promotion is in charge of
addressing students health needs
through a variety of awareness
and facilitation programs.
Our priorities this year are
mental health, sexual violence,
and alcohol and other drugs, said
Vladimir Oge, director of Health
Promotion. We are looking at
past assessments and further refining our data tool for more effective programming and services,
to ensure we are improving health
behavior and mitigating risks.

One of Health Promotions

priorities is to provide support to
survivors of sexual violence while
increasing access to information
about safe, consensual sex.
Health Promotion coordinates the VOICE Initiative, a
comprehensive sexual violence
program with a mission to end
sexual violence at Georgia Tech
through prevention, and victim
advocacy services to support survivors of sexual assault, Oge said.
The GYP (Get Yourself
Protected) campaign is geared
towards promoting safer sex
practices via print and social media, along with increasing the

availability of condoms for students who choose to engage in

sexual activity, Oge said.
Health Promotion also works
with outside organizations to
bring new health programs
to campus.
Through a partnership with
the Governors Office of Highway Safety, we promote a number
of outreach programs aimed at
preventing the consequences
associated with alcohol abuse,
including impaired or distracted
driving, Oge said.
Our mission is to provide
learning opportunities to empower students to make healthy

decisions, Harrington said. The

best way to make healthy decisions is to equip yourself with the
knowledge and information that
enables you to stay healthy.
Harrington
encourages
students interested in finding
out more about health initiatives
on campus to check out Health
Promotion online.
All of the information about
the programs and services we
provide is readily available via
our website: healthpromotion.
gatech.edu, Harrington said.
Additionally, students are encouraged to follow us on our
many social media platforms.

Photo by Tiara Winata Student Publications

Students use fitness equipment available to members at the Campus Recreation Center.
As a Healthy Campus 2020 Partner, Tech will stress on-campus wellness resources for students.

Drugs destroy and ruin millions of

lives every year.
What should YOU know about them?
Drugfreeworld.org

Opinions
OUR VIEWS | Consensus Opinion

I love mankind; Its people I cant

stand. Charles M. Schulz

Making homecoming accessible

Allowing more students to participate is key

Every year, homecoming brings a flurry

of merriment to Tech. But when the planning and execution of the festivities and
major events is lacking, the experience
cannot be the exceptional and memorable
time that homecoming is marketed as.
Many of the homecoming events and
traditions are not well catered to much of
the student body. Many students enjoy
traditions such as the Mini 500, but it requires group participation. This is ideal for
Greek and Freshman Experience students,
however, those without a predetermined
group have difficulty participating. Therefore, the big homecoming events should
allow for individual participation in order
to ensure that a greater percentage of the
student body can engage.
Additionally, the events could be further improved if more of the events were
moved to accessible times, such as those
later in the evening or even during the
weekend. For example, the homecoming

concert is always scheduled for Thursday,

discouraging students with Friday classes.
Students would not have to worry so
much about balancing desires to participate in homecoming with class attendance. Many students already have trouble
waking up for 8 a.m. classes, so an 8 a.m.
homecoming event cannot be expected to
draw a large crowd.
Lastly, the homecoming football game
against Duke is scheduled at noon. The
noon games earlier in the season had predictably poor turnouts, and the homecoming game which is supposed to be an
occasion for students as well as alumni
should be played later, at a time when attendees are guaranteed to show en masse.
Tradition and spirit are certainly important, but all students need to be given the
opportunity to take part in it. Otherwise,
Techs educational experience becomes
little more than a simple transaction for its
many students.

The Consensus Opinion reflects the majority opinion of the Editorial Board of the
Technique, but not necessarily the opinions of individual editors.

TRUMP CARD INEFFECTIVE BY LANAH MARIE JOSE

Friday,
October 21, 2016

YOUR VIEWS | Online Comments

Tech to host ACC events

This is great news for all of those ACC schools from
New York!

DrawnAndQuartered
Equal Opportunity for Religious Holidays
... whats so bad about telling a professor at the
beginning of the semester? It sounds to me that
that would help them plan better for the semester,
especially if they find lots of students will be gone one
day. The dates are pretty set; you dont have to wait
for someone to announce when they are.

lledrubnave
... The creation of the new policy was to address
the fact that there was not a current policy allowing
students to have excused absences for religious
holidays. The intent of this policy was to allow
and encourage students from all backgrounds to
celebrate and observe their traditions.

Laura Margaret Burbach

Okay, except Christmas is a secular holiday in
addition to being a Christian one.

technique editorial board

Vidya Iyer EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Nick Johnson MANAGING EDITOR
Alexis Brazier HEAD COPY EDITOR
David Raji OPINIONS EDITOR
Maura Currie NEWS EDITOR
Kara Pendley ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
Harsha Sridhar SPORTS EDITOR
Brighton Kamen DESIGN EDITOR
Jon Long LIFE EDITOR
Brenda Lin EDITOR EMERITUS
Kripa Chandran ONLINE EDITOR
Sara Schmitt PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Ross Lindsay WEB DEVELOPER

technique

OPINIONS EDITOR: David Raji

cth
TOP SLIVERS

Excellent post. I was checking continuously this blog

and Im impressed! Extremely useful information
specially the last part fbbggegbkeebkdfg

test

Have yall heard about this plan to put intro computer

science into a MOOC format, starting in January?
Seems newsworthy to me.

Write to us:

letters@nique.net
Got something to say? Then let
your voice be heard with the Technique. Sliver at Nique.net, tweet us
@the_nique or check us out on Facebook at facebook.com/thenique. We
want to hear your opinion and want
to make it known to all of campus.
We also welcome your letters in
response to Technique content as well
as topics relevant to campus. We will
print letters on a timely and spaceavailable basis.
Each week we look for letters that

are responses to or commentaries on

content found within the pages of the
Technique. Along with these letters,
we are open to receiving letters that
focus on relevant issues that currently
affect Georgia Tech as a university, including its campus and student body.
When submitting letters we ask
that you include your full name, year
(1st, 2nd, etc.) and major. We ask that
letters be thought provoking, well
written and in good taste. We reserve
the right to both reject or edit letters
for length and style.
For questions, comments or concern, contact the Opinions Editor at
opinions@nique.net.

6 October 21, 2016 technique

// OPINIONS

On being seen as an American

Do you plan on
participating in any
homecoming events?

ANNIE MULLINS
FIRST-YEAR MSE

No.

When someone asks where

I am from, I reply with a practiced, canned answer: I hail
from New Jersey. Born in New
York City. Parents are from
Taiwan. This may seem like an
oddly specific way to reply this
question, but for me, it circumvents the inevitable inquiry that
follows: So, where are you really from?
From a young age, I have
grappled to define myself between two cultures, that of my
parents and the one that was
thrust upon me at birth never fully fitting in one box or the
other. My grade school lunch
was a perfect symbolization of
my cultural mix: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a
dessert of Pocky and a can of
Apple Sidra.
I was standout in my elementary and middle school, not due
my unique lunches but being
one a handful of non-white students in a school district dominated by Caucasians whose families have been in the country for
generations. To my grade school
classmates, I was an Asian Leopold Bloom, belonging to two nations, one of which underlined
an outsider status.
The flip side was no different.
When returning to the motherland for visits, my sister and I

Is it impossible to divorce
the ideas of who we may
look like and who we
actually are?

BRENDA LIN

EDITOR EMERITUS

encounter the branding of vi go

lang, Taiwanese for American,
wherever we go by strangers on
the street and relatives alike. To
them, by our sense of style, ideas
and preferred language, we were
undoubtedly American.
These statements were in
some ways more accurate. I am,
in fact, an American, born and
bred in spite of my parents efforts to connect us with our
Taiwanese roots with speaking
Mandarin at home and attending Chinese school for 12 years.
I studied Mark Twain in lieu of
Li Bai, mastered the ideas of the
Constitution and what it stand
for, and was constantly preached
the American Dream of if you
work hard enough, you can do
anything.
In an interview with Vulture
on the Taiwan-based episodes
of Fresh off the Boat, a show

that constantly addresses this

disconnect, showrunner Nahnatchka Khan noted, When
you are something-American,
like Persian-American, Latin
American, Asian-American, you
are American, she says. Otherwise youre just Asian or Persian.
That idea that you go back and
everything falls into place is a
fantasy your experience of
living in America changes you.
So, why arent Asian-Americans like me perceived as just
Americans in the eyes of our
fellow Americans? We grow up
speaking English. We watch the
same television shows. We take
the same classes and are taught
the same ideals. Is it impossible
to divorce the ideas of who we
may look like and who we actually are? Even if thats the case,
why isnt how we look accepted
as also American.

There is an equal number of

Italian-Americans and AsianAmericans in the U.S., so why
are they hailed as being entirely
American while the AsianAmericans are perceived as foreign? As New York Times editor Michael Luo pointed out in
his piece An Open Letter to the
Woman Who Told My Family
to Go Back to China, we have
to say that we are born in this
U.S. as proof that we belong.
That ambiguity is further
muddled when pieces like Jesse
Watters Fox News piece on
Chinatown reduces people into
a punchline with gross stereotypes that Asians in America,
cant speak English well, ignorant of American issues and
only care about karate (which
isnt even Chinese, the group he
was trying to target in his segment.) We are not the submissive model minority that Bill
OReilly and his team are trying
to mis-characterize us as.
Like many Asian-Americans
and other children of immigrants, I have been culturally
trapped in the middle. Im not
just Taiwanese, but I am not just
American either. Im really that
hyphen in the middle trying to
bridge the two ideas. We include
the -American because ultimately, we are Americans.

The regretful plateau of phone innovation

JUNKI PATEL

THIRD-YEAR CS

Im going to the
homecoming concert.

DAN DEMIKO

SECOND-YEAR EE

The egg toss and chalking.

SHAN SUEN

SECOND-YEAR CMPE

Yes, the talent show, the

donut eating contest and
chalking.
Photos by David Raji Student Publications

Apples biggest release yet,

iOS 10, is also the least impactful. To understand why, one
must understand jailbreaking
hacking the iPhone.
There have been over 30 million jailbroken iDevices, so it
was almost a necessity to do.
The three reasons to jailbreak
were to download cracked versions of paid apps, re-theme the
UI, and, most importantly, have
a half-decent user experience.
Remember when notifications hijacked the screen until
you acknowledged them? Thank
the MobileNotifier hack for inspiring iOS 5, where Notification Center and banner notifications were implemented. How
about having to find Calculator
in a numerical emergency or
having to navigate Settings just
to turn on Wifi? SBSettings was
one of the most installed hacks,
long before iOS 7 made it baseline with Control Center.
Consequently, it seems like
the iOS team has only created
two original, important, usercentric, purely software features
since iOS was born: Siri in iOS
5 and the flat UI design of iOS
7. (Developer-oriented features,
like the Metal API of iOS 8,
as well as security fixes should
not be discounted, but the average user honestly does not care
about any of that.)
Siri herself was a company
that Apple bought out, but Ill
still give them a point. Removing the skeuomorphic design of
yore in favor of a flat UI honestly
wasnt that big of a deal, despite
every tech outlet spawning four
think-pieces about the decision.
Thats about it: a pre-existing
company and a designer being
allowed to have an opinion after
Steve Jobs death. Every other
major iOS feature used to be a

The iOS team is out of

ideas, which is to say
jailbreakers are out of
ideas.

NICK JOHNSON
MANAGING EDITOR

legally contentious hack if

it wasnt copied from a popular
third-party app instead. Modern notifications, Control Center, Night Shift, Do Not Disturb, the Switchers card view,
parallaxing app icons, custom
notification vibrations, custom
ringtones, battery percentage,
third-party apps and even copy/
paste used to be hacks to make
iOS less bad.
There are some useful hacks
that may never be implemented.
Custom themes negate Apples
branding. Filesystem access isnt
a great idea for the most popular, most secure device on Earth.
Paid apps generate more revenue
than illegal free versions.
As of iOS 7, there werent
too many hacks left in Cydia
(the App Store for jailbreakers)
that Apple hadnt already made
a core part of the software. For
that reason, jailbreaking stopped
being necessary. The decrease in
jailbreaking coincided with, if
not caused, the lack of new useroriented features in iOS 8, 9 and
now 10.
Respectively, iOS 3 through
9 added basic functionality,
multitasking and the unified
inbox, modern notifications
and Siri, Apple Maps and Facebook integration, a new design
philosophy and clean UI, 4000
developer APIs and a new pro-

gramming language, and a major spring cleaning and battery

life improvements. (iOS 6 was
bad, yes, but Apple Maps is
more than worth the pixels its
icon takes up now.)
That brings us back to iOS
10: fancier Messages, new
UI, Siri can call an Uber, new
sounds, the removal of the patented Slide to Unlock (RIP) and
a neural net watching you type.
There cannot be a major release without adding or changing something fundamental
whether or not that something is
user-facing. Novelty Messages is
too unimportant, and enhanced
autocorrect is too subtle. In order to have the biggest release
yet, it also had to be the most
fluffed 1.1 gigabytes of Apple
fiddling with the UI. Some of
these changes are good; some
are awful. Jony Ive changed
the entire UI in iOS 7 as a new
clean-design philosophy; iOS 10
changed the entire UI because it
had nothing better to do.
Buzzfeed called this kind of
thing dude-fussing, saying
these actions dont have any
real effect. But they are fussy
and make a great show of effort
at doing something to make it
all better. Apple changed everything to hide the fact that it
changed almost nothing. Maybe
theres not much left to change.

The iPhone itself is seeing

similar struggles. CPU will always be better two years into the
future, but even Moores Law
isnt holding out anymore due
to real-life physics. After the 64bit iPhone 5S with the Secure
Enclave, the only important
thing that could feasibly change
next was the iPhones size or the
most-used peripheral port of all
time. Once the 6 and 6+ ran the
gamut for size, there was only
one option left for the 7.
Removing the headphone
jack wasnt a decision made with
courage; it was the only justification for releasing an entirely
new phone in 2016. The only
other choice was to not make
a new iPhone, which may have
been even more unacceptable
of a decision. They havent released the 7s sales numbers as
they have done for every other
iPhone in the past, suggesting
the vernal SE was a good idea.
The only thing left to add to
the iPhone is an organic LED
(AMOLED) screen to improve
battery life. This is something
other popular phones already
have, so Apple has to do it too.
Both iOS and the iPhone are
nearly complete. It will be too
soon for iOS 11 to change everything again come next year, and
theres nothing terribly important left to add. The iOS team
is out of ideas, which is to say
jailbreakers are out of ideas.
On the other hand, the
iPhone team has one big decision left to celebrate the phones
10th birthday. At that point,
modern cell phones will be virtually identical to each other.
In other words, the next
iPhone or two will be a Samsung Galaxy that the FBI and
your favorite headphones cant
get into anymore.

technique October 21, 2016 7

// OPINIONS

YOUR VIEWS | Letter to the Editor

Upgrading to electric buses

a necessity for Tech
Offerman at Tech

Armchairs leave Sbux

Georgia Tech students had

the chance to meet Nick Offerman this past Wednesday,
Oct. 19, at the Ferst Center for
the Arts. He is best known for
playing the disgruntled parks
director, Ron Swanson, from
Parks and Recreation. However, Offerman was not here
to promote his acting. In fact,
much like his character, he is
a woodworking enthusiast and
was promoting his new book,
Good Clean Fun.

The armchairs at the Starbucks in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Centre

have been taken away for unknown reasons. The chairs
were especially comfortable
spots of respite one could relax
at in between difficult classes
or just to sip thoughtfully on
a frappuccino. Hopefully we
will see more of these types of
relaxation spots in the building to replace the lost chairs at
Starbucks.

Tech Alum Astronaut

Election Day Classes

National Aeronautics and

Space Association (NASA) astronaut and Tech grad Shane
Kimbrough will be docking
at the International Space Station along with two other Russian cosmonauts on the Oct.
21. Kimbrough is a Georgia
native and received his masters degree at Tech where he
conducted operations research.
He is one of 14 Tech graduates
representing their alma mater
in space.

The U.S. voter turnout

trails most developed countries, and thats not surprising
considering that election day
is on a regular Tuesday. At
Tech, we will be having regular classes on the day of the
election which makes it difficult for some students to go
out and vote. Many countries
around the world conduct federal elections over weekends,
or designate the day of voting
as a national holiday.

With a campus that prides

itself on being green and
touts its LEED certifications,
the transportation system is a
black sheep.

DAVID ALMAN
FOURTH-YEAR AE

While the quality of Tech students and a Tech education has

only risen in the past years, one
aspect of Tech has remained relatively constant: the quality of its
transportation system. With the
exception of the Tech Square Express, which mostly benefits business students or those living in
off-campus housing, the majority
of the undergraduate population
have seen no great increase in the
quality of the transportation system, qualitatively or quantitatively, since their arrival on campus.
One deficiency is exceptionally wearing for many students,
particularly those who walk next
to or bike on the bus routes: pollution. Almost every student is familiar with the suffocating black
cloud of smoke (pollution) that
the buses emit as they accelerate. It
is an eyesore, nose-sore and health
hazard. With a campus that prides
itself on being green and touts its
LEED certifications, the transportation system is a black sheep.
The solution is simple: go electric. While many cite cost as a
deterrent, I will cite competition
as an incentive. In June of 2016,
U(sic)GA was awarded a $10 million grant from the GO! Transit
Capital Program to purchase 19

electric buses for its fleet. U(sic)

GA provided another $5 million
in matching funds. These buses
are intended to replace the oldest
of U(sic)GAs diesel buses and will
contribute to a cleaner and more
appealing campus environment.
Just as Americas space program
was pushed onwards by Soviet
competition, so should Techs
transportation modernization be
pushed on by U(sic)GAs. As an
aerospace engineer and history
nerd, I appreciate such things.
While the upfront cost of
switching to electric vehicles is a
deterrent, it pays for itself in the
long-term. While not directly
related to Tech, a New York
University study on New Yorks
transportation system can provide
insight into the savings. The study
found that diesel buses typically
cost $500,000, with electric buses
coming in $300,000 higher at
around $800,000. However, over
the 12-year lifetime of the bus, a
diesel bus will cost the operator
$1.348 million while an electric
bus will cost only $1.18 million.
Over the lifetime of the operation,
an electric bus will save the operator $168,000.
While it is likely that the numbers for Tech will be somewhat

different, $168,000 over 12 years

is a significant number and one
that provides enough margin to
justify looking into the idea. If
one assumes that Tech operates 16
vehicles (assumption is 3 each for
Red, Blue, Green, Trolley, and 2
each for Emory and Tech Square),
then that works out to be a savings of $2.688 million over the
lifetime of the system (12 years
x 168,000 per year per bus x 16
buses). Per year, that works out to
be a savings of $224,000 (enough
to pay for at least two more fulltime counselors in the counseling
center, or assist in upgrades for
the Student Center, Instructional
Center or aerospace buildings).
Tech is ideally positioned to
conduct such a study. According to the data that I was able to
obtain, Techs current contract
with Groome Transportation
ends in 2020. A study started in
the Spring of 2017 could make a
decision on the future by Fall of
2018. This would provide nearly
2 years for development of a plan
to go fully-electric. This could be
done either in the form of only allowing bidding from electric bus
companies or through the establishment of a Tech run and operated bus system, which would
have the advantage of giving Civil
Engineering and Public Policy
students, among others, access to
internships and work experience
on a problem directly relevant to
challenging real-world issues.
There is a final benefit to Tech
switching to an electric bus system: marketing. The prospect of
a totally green transportation system would add to Techs reputation as a progressive, technologically advanced institution.

8 October 21, 2016 technique

ROUND TABLE
DAVID RAJI

OPINIONS EDITOR
Decrying the voting
process of the U.S. is a routine duty I fulfill at any given opportunity. My hope
is that, with enough bombardment of the same facts
and rhetoric against the
system, enough people will
develop awareness of how
unacceptable of a state it is
currently in.
At its heart, the winnertake-all and first-pastthe-post voting rules that
define and govern the conditions for election victory
are supremely unfitting for
any nation that chooses to
claim itself a democracy. To
be clear, by winner-takeall, I refer to the fact that
in the presidential election
especially, the candidate
who finds themself the
recipient of the most popular votes is awarded all
electoral votes for that state.
The effect of this practice
is that often nearly half of

the votes for most states are

simply discounted.
This
corner-cutting
can be understood if
one looks to the past,
to the founding of this
nation. After all, the
originators of the electoral
college most likely thought
at the time that the electoral
and popular result would
almost always be identical,
and that this would be a
neat little trick to save some
time. But today, a vastly
different situation exists
in which the popular vote
seems to have no perceptible downside.
The first-past-the-post,
or the plurality-rule, is
the practice of which applies to pretty much every single elected position
(except president, which
requires a majority of electoral votes). It crushes any
third party challenges
to the status quo, while
simultaneously rewarding
candidates that misrepresent the majority of the voting populace.

// OPINIONS

What are the flaws inherent

in our voting system?
Examining the methodology and psychology of our
voting tendencies and practices today

How does that work?

Well, say you have five candidates, named A, B, C and
D running for U.S. senator.
Say A wins 29 percent of the
vote, B wins 26 percent, C
wins 24 percent and D wins
21 percent. Even though a
whopping 71 percent of the
citizenship did not want A,
this is now their chosen representative.
Over time, voters realize that their favorite option
cannot win and, as a result,
cede support to different
candidates that share, at
best, similar views to their
first choice. Candidates
who are deserted in this
way, despite representing
chunks of the population,
are knocked out. This sad
cycle continues until only
two candidates remain.
What comes of all this?
It is hard to say. Perhaps
some of the same idealism
that drives others to support candidates like Bernie
Sanders still lives in me, believing that the system can
somehow be changed.

WILL FINCH

CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Voting it propels
the plot of shows like
The Bachelor, and it just
so happens to be how we
choose our government representatives.
However, it seems as
though voters choices for
the final rose are growing
increasingly more extreme
in their views and only
becoming more polarized.
Such is the voting system
that Tech students the
newest generation of voters
are participating in: not
agreeing upon a representative of collective ideals and
beliefs but rather a tool that
two warring factions use for
party advantage while perpetuating partisanship in
America.
One of the most common foundations for political campaigns is electing more of one party and
preventing the reelection of
the opposing party. In the

midst of countless other

global and national issues,
politicians epitomize a my
way or the highway type
of thinking on a scale that
does nothing but contribute
to political dysfunction.
Democracy depends on
compromise resulting from
vigorous debate among
competing views that represent the American people,
but with both the parties
and the public becoming
increasingly polarized, cooperation is becoming significantly less possible.
Multiple studies have
found that Republicans and
Democrats alike are more
divided along ideological
lines than ever before, and
it affects politics, compromise and everyday life. In
2014, the overall share of
Americans who expressed
consistently
conservative or consistently liberal
opinions doubled over the
previous two decades from
10 to 21 percent, and ideological overlap between the
two parties has diminished.

Animosity between the

two has only grown since
roughly a third of each party believed that the other
was a threat to the nations
well-being at the time.
While most Americans
might not share these sentiments, the most ideologically oriented make their
voices heard in greater
stages of the political process than many others in
the center of the political
spectrum. As a result, the
gap between parties grows
along with the animosity
and sense of competition.
Voting should be more
than a choice of party dominance. Even though Americans might be unhappy
with the current state of
Washington, the best thing
voters can do is expand
their political literacy before the next election. After all, knowledge is power,
and in a government where
power lies in the hands of
the people, knowledge is
the first step to creating significant change.

Entertainment

technique

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR:

Kara Pendley

ASSISTANT ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR:

Monica Jamison

entertainment@nique.net

Friday,
October 21, 2016

Offerman presents love-letter to woodworking

BOOKS

Good Clean Fun

Nick Offerman
GENRE: Humor
PUBLISHER: Dutton
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18

OUR TAKE:
AVANTI JOGLEKAR

CONTRIBUTING WRITER
One characteristic that Ron
Swanson, the beloved mustachioed character from NBCs
sitcom Parks and Recreation,
shares with the actor who portrays
him, Nick Offerman, is a sincere
love of woodworking. Good
Clean Fun: Misadventures in
Sawdust at the Offerman Woodshop is a 344-page love letter to
the art of woodworking and the
people who admire and engage
in the craft.
The book features how-to,
mirth, fashion tips, recipes, odes
to wood and assorted tomfoolery as advertised on the cover, all
while retaining the light-hearted
tone established by the lyrics to a
song, its good, its clean, its good
clean fun.
Im no wood scientist, writes
Offerman in a section titled On
Wood, but I thought I would
take a moment to talk about this
bewitching material itself. After
all, its the very reason were all
here on this page today.
This homage to the substance
itself ranges from poetic to scientific while maintaining the sort of
humor one brings to a topic they
know and love well.
Good Clean Fun also provides much insight into the woodworking that happens at the Offerman Woodshop, a shop that
Offerman runs in L.A. The Offerman Woodshop produces fine,
handcrafted furniture and other
fun items such as ukuleles and
moustache combs.

Photo courtesy of Offerman Woodshop

Nick Offerman wields a wooden ax outside his woodshop where he is always finding innovative ways to utilize trees. Offerman combines his love of woodwork and comedy in his new book, Good Clean Fun: Misadventures in Sawdust at the Offerman Woodshop.

Offerman and his rag-tag

crew of champions describe their
experiences and passion and provide detailed how-to instructions for everyone from novices,
seeking to start their woodworking endeavors with a pencil holder
or coaster, to more advanced artisans, seeking to create a berry
stool, slingshot dining chair or
even a slumber jack bed.
Interspersed amongst the
clever and often hilarious people
introducing and taking the reader
through the process of making a

kazoo or beaver tail paddle are comedic interludes, such as a comic

strip illustrating The Best Way to
Fell a Tree.
Accompanying each page are
visually stunning photographs
and graphics along with informative figures for the more technical
parts of the book. As promised, a
section titled Cookout features
recipes for the essential meats,
such as burgers, pork chops, steak,
and sides, such as spanakopita
and mashed potatoes, drinks or
solemn oath brewery selects for

those interested in pairing beer

with their meals, and blueberry
pie for dessert.
Indeed, as the final page, featuring Essay On Wood by James
Richardson, says, I wonder if
something in us is made of wood,
maybe not quite the heart, knocking softly/or maybe not made of
it, but made for its call ... It will
sit with us, eat with us, lie down/
and hold our books (themselves
a rustling woods). Good Clean
Fun is itself a rustling woods,
paying respects to a craft well-

loved by those who are made of,

or made for, the call of wood.
Good Clean Fun is Offermans third book after the
bestselling Paddle Your Own
Canoe: One Mans Fundamentals
for Delicious Living and Gumption: Relighting the Torch of
Freedom with Americas Gutsiest
Troublemakers. Good Clean
Fun was released on Oct. 18
from Dutton. On Oct. 19, Tech
hosted An Evening by Nick Offerman at the Ferst Center for
the Arts.

TELEVISION

discover what their dreams might

tell them about their actual lives.
On the surface, it seems that the
mystery which underlies the show
could be engaging and fascinating, but there is one glaring problem: after the first episode, there
is no indication whatsoever as to
what that mystery might be.
In fact, after the first episode,
the viewer has little idea of what
the show might even be; the pilot
introduces a complex web of shallowly developed characters and
partially explored motifs which
coalesce into an incoherent mess
of confusion. The plot is so entangled, in fact, that the viewer is
left with a few disconnected ideas
and practically no notion of why
those ideas are significant or how
they will play into the narrative of
the series.
The episode does show some
promise, however, in the development of the three principal characters: Burton (David Ajala, Kill

Command), Tess (Lizzie Brocher, American Horror Story)

and Taka (Will Yun Lee, The
Wolverine). The creators of the
show effectively bring out deep
conflicts and personality traits in
these characters in the single episode, revealing with subtlety and
taste some of their deepest and
darkest secrets.
The viewer becomes aware that
each of the three characters has
some weakness, some emotional
demon which haunts them and
frustrates their desire to maintain
control of themselves and their situation. The three also lack a propensity to trust others, a deficiency
almost certainly stemming from
the personal demons haunting
them in their dreams.
Still, these interesting and welldeveloped characters are brought
down by a sea of obnoxiously underdeveloped characters that surrounds them. These characters of-

Falling Water premiere befuddles audiences

Falling Water
NETWORK: USA
WHEN: Thurs. 10 p.m.
STARRING: David Ajali, Lizzie
Brochere and Will Yun Lee

OUR TAKE:
JOSH TREBUCHON

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Photo courtesy of USA

Tess, played by Lizzie Brocher, tries to discover what her dreams

might mean. Falling Water has left audiences in the dark so far.

Fans of science fiction/mystery

series like Fringe and Mr. Robot, anxiously gathered around
their televisions on Oct. 13 to
watch USA Networks latest contribution to the now-crowded
genre, Falling Water.
Part surreal mystery, part science fiction thriller, the new series
centers on three characters who
find that they or, rather, their
dreams exist in a single, interconnected world and who must

See FALLING, page 11

10 October 21, 2016 technique

// ENTERTAINMENT

Accountant box office sales rise with body count

FILM

The Accountant
GENRE: Action Thriller
STARRING: Ben Affleck and
Anna Kendrick
DIRECTOR: Gavin OConnor
RATING: R
RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7

OUR TAKE:
LAKSHMI RAJU
STAFF WRITER

A neuroatypical accountant
who disposes of those that clash
with his moral code is the idea
behind The Accountant. This
stars Ben Affleck (Gone Girl) as
Christian Wolff, the accountant,
and other notable actors Anna
Kendrick (Pitch Perfect) and
J.K. Simmons (Spider-Man).
The audience is first introduced to Wolff, diagnosed with
autism, via flashbacks of his childhood. The audience learns that
his mother wanted him to be in
a care home as a child, with other
neuroatypical children and the
caregivers who can help him
adapt. Wolffs father disagrees,
and this division leads to a
rather unexpected outcome for
Wolff. The relationship between
Wolff and his brother is an important touchstone that recurs
throughout the movie.

The current day Wolff is an

accountant who has normal clients, like a farmer couple, that
cover for his less sunny work as
an accountant for crime lords
and mob bosses. He un-cooks the
books or finds a leak in the money
over years of financial accounting.
He is not only mathematically
talented, but also has amassed
the talents of an effective soldier
with impeccable sniper capabilities and impressive hand-to-hand
combat skills.
Those who stray from his moral bounds face consequences as he
plays judge, jury and executioner.
This brings Treasury Agent Ray
King (J.K. Simmons) to his trail
to unmask Wolffs identity. As
his cover, Wolff works as a certified public accountant (CPA) in a
small town. When Wolff discovers his cover is being investigated,
he takes a huge cover job with the
prosthetic company, Living Robotics, to determine if someone
has been embezzling funds after
Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick, Pitch Perfect) notices an
oddity in the numbers.
Watching the movie was only
enhanced by knowing scenes were
filmed on Techs campus where
Affleck and Kendrick exchange
an awkward, adorable and slightly
stilted conversation on the steps of
the Student Center by the Campanile. A beautifully nerdy accounting montage occurs when
Wolff fills the windows and walls
of a conference room in Klaus

with numbers as he deciphers the

15 years of financials of Living
Robotics in one night. It is quite
fitting for such a scene to occur on
Techs fantastically nerdy campus.
The movie was also filmed in the
Academy of Medicine, and other
spots around campus.
Though Wolffs character
could have easily come off as an
off-his-rocker autistic hit man, the
creators of the movie deftly intertwined the autistic disorder and
the role Wolff plays in the world.
It is an exquisite masterpiece that
has been achieved when the audience attaches to Wolff and laughs
as he shoots the man threatening
Dana, much like Deadpool,
that created a lovable villain
through comedic value and character transformation.
Thats not to say there was no
comedy in the movie. Wolffs
interactions with Cummings
were delightful, especially when
Cummings tries to joke with
Wolff as he tries to be polite despite not understanding most of
her jokes. The small smiles that
slightly lift the corner of his lips
every now and then when he interacts with Cummings are heartwarming. This movie allowed the
audience to bond and relate to
Wolff as a man trying to fit in the
world as well as he could while
overcoming the obstacles associated with autism.
The Accountant was deeply
satisfying throughout. At no point
did the plot drag out or become

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick, playing Christian Wolff and Dana,
shoot scenes in a conference room in Klaus on Techs campus.

overly predictable. The movie itself was an oddity in that it is so

different from most in its genre,
and the film was made so much
better knowing that Tech was the
backdrop. Afflecks acting was
phenomenal, completely redeeming his performance in Batman
v. Superman.
From the coping mechanism to
deal with the sensitivities due to
autism, to the friendship and love

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he holds for Dana, Wolffs large

heart is unlikely at first glance
but becomes apparent when he
aids a couple to lower their taxes
as a small town CPA, and the
deep friendships he has for those
he lets in. Ben Affleck hit it out
of the park with The Accountant. Overall, the movie was outstanding in its portrayal of autism
and was a phenomenal tale from
start to finish.

technique October 21, 2016 11

// ENTERTAINMENT

Two Door Cinema Club brings new sound

MUSIC

Gameshow
Two Door Cinema Club
LABEL: Parlophone
GENRE: Indie Rock
TRACK PICKS: Beacon,
What You Know and I Can
Talk

OUR TAKE:
EMMANUEL HALDOPOULOS
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Two Door Cinema Clubs

third album, Gameshow, represents the proving ground for
the relatively young band. While
their first two releases found success in the increasingly competitive indie-rock scene, Beacon
and Tourist History differ very
little in terms of musical content,
although this is not a bad thing.
What You Know and Undercover Martyn stood out as some
of the most popular electropop/
dance songs during their respective releases.
In order to retain current fans
while simultaneously attracting
a new audience, members Alex
Trimble (lead vocalist), Kevin
Baird (bass) and Sam Halliday
(lead guitar) needed to produce
a set list that retained the danceable, electropop attributes of the
first two albums while venturing
into new territory. Inspiration
from the likes of David Bowie and
Prince drove the tone of Gameshow to adhere to an 80s nostalgia-themed movement.
The headliners, Beacon and
Tourist History, emanate a
sense of occasion. I Can Talk,
for example, is featured in the
soundtrack of the popular soccer
video game FIFA. The celebra-

Photo courtesy of TinekeKlamer.nl

Alex Tremble plays rhythm guitar in Portugal and Russia during Two Door Cinema Club tour. The
band recently released their new album, and it is sure to please new and old fans of their music.

tion of the occasion is complemented by the upbeat foreshadowing of the song.

While some content within
Gameshow is true to the bands
roots, such as Are We Ready?
(Wreck) featured in FIFA 17
for its recognizable upbeat tone,
the headliners carry more weight
than those of Two Door Cinema
Clubs previous albums. In a
sense, it is evident that the band
has matured in its song writing.
For those that are familiar with
the heist film The Italian Job,
the scene in which the characters
have finally completed the heist
and must go their separate ways,
pockets stuffed with cash, would
be perfectly covered by the current albums weightier songs like
Fever or Invincible. The sense
of opportunity in these respective

songs is impressive, for pieces with

such critical lyrics and regretful
undertones are seldom positive
and opportunistic in their overtones. The productions of Two
Door Cinema Clubs past albums
did not carry such depth.
It is not to say that there are no
songs in Gameshow that identify with the indie-rock and electropop mixtures that are familiar
in the bands previous albums.
The title songs Gameshow and
Bad Decisions both resemble
the highly danceable songs of the
bands past recordings, and for
that reason are sure to achieve the
same, if not greater, amount of
success as their predecessors.
Portions of this mastering process that Two Door Cinema Club
has achieved with Gameshow
are evident in the minor changes

within the production of each

song. Trimbles voice now takes
the back seat to the prevalent
beats and synthesis particularly
noticeable in Ordinary, Surgery and Good Morning. The
effect, reminiscent of Princes style
of dance as a complement to his
music, encourages the listener to
feel the music.
This method of production,
along with the increased depth
of the bands music, separates not
only Gameshow from its predecessors, but also Two Door Cinema Club from its competitors.
No other electropop/indie rock
band manages to generate such a
mixed range of emotions from its
music. Gameshow is now available to download and stream via
Spotify, Apple Music and Google
Play Music.

FALLING

FROM PAGE 9

ten have considerable amounts of

screen time and dialogue, yet the
viewer learns practically nothing
about them from the episode.
There are even characters who
seem poised to play a significant
role in the show but are then left
with less character development
than Marcellos, a restaurant referenced by the characters with unusual frequency.
One case that stands out is Bill
Boerg, as there is even reason to
believe that he is the otherwise
unnamed narrator. This lack of
development of some major characters presents a serious problem
for a show which professes to explore the ripples in the Jungian
collective unconscious.
Tragi-comically, the shows
greatest power, its ability to confuse the viewers delineation between dream and reality, is ultimately its greatest weakness.
While watching the show, the
viewer is never quite sure whether
or not a character is dreaming.
This unique feature is impressive, and it lends the show flexibility in that any viewer theory
is possible because anything that
contradicts itself in the show can
be dismissed as actually being
part of a dream. Still, this actually takes away from the thrill of
watching. If any theory is possible, no theory feels correct, and
the suspense viewers love so much
about watching science fiction
mystery show disappears.
For now, after the release of
the pilot episode, the show is
ambitious and at first intriguing,
but it is weighed down by an inconsistently developed cast of
characters, an absurdist narrative
style which puts Samuel Beckett
to shame, and a barely embryonic
plot. If Falling Water does not
offer viewers something new and
coherent in the next few episodes,
a second season might exist only
in its dreams.

12 October 21, 2016 technique

// COMICS

SMBC BY ZACH WEINERSMITH

XKCD BY RANDALL MUNROE

SARAHS SCRIBBLES BY SARAH ANDERSEN

IN THE BLEACHERS BY STEVE MOORE

CLASSIC
FOXTROT BY BILL AMEND

technique October 21, 2016 13

// COMICS

DILBERT BY SCOTT ADAMS

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE BY STEPHEN PASTIS

CUL DE SAC BY RICHARD THOMPSON

LIO BY MARK TATULLI

CLASSIC
CALVIN & HOBBES BY BILL WATTERSON

SUDOKU PUZZLE

14 October 21, 2016 technique

MILLS FROM PAGE 1

Within the ACC, he has received Rookie of the Week for
his performance against Miami
in Week 5, but beyond that he is
quietly having an excellent season.
In addition to his physical ability, it seems that Mills is rarely
fazed during a game. He stays focused and engaged on the game,
even when he is not always getting
the ball.
When asked how he stays in
focus so well, Mills responded,
Basically just paying attention
to my assignment and paying attention to what other people are
doing, listening to the coaches on
the sideline and listening to whats
going on.
Furthermore, Mills channels
all of the positive energy from the
game into his play. In the Boston
College game, he and the rest of
the team could have easily failed
to advance the final drive, even after the 4th and 19 conversion.
This drive is the quintessential
example of the trust Paul Johnson
has in Mills when the team enters
a goal-to-go situation. Both plays
for the Jackets within the 10-yard
line on the drive put the ball in
Millss hands.
For a freshman in his first
game, it was meaningful to both
have the trust of the coaches and
live up to it with serious implications on the line.
Scoring the game-winning
touchdown was more than just
another score for Mills. It was
early evidence of the trust and responsibilities placed on him early
in his college career.
However, it should be noted
that Mills still has work to do. In
his opinion, he needs to work on
his blocking, specifically in passing situations.
B-backs coach Bryan Cook
thinks Mills has a long way to go
before he is a force. The most important thing Mills has to work
on is his off-ball activity.

// SPORTS

Playing the same way when

he doesnt have the ball in his
hands [is important], Cook said,
because weve seen him when
hes got it. When hes got it, hes
violent, and hes doing some really
good things. Weve got to carry
that over when he doesnt [have
the ball].
His improvement is tangible,
though. On the third play of the
game against Georgia Southern,
quarterback Justin Thomas broke
away for a 58-yard run for the first
touchdown of the game. The run
wouldnt have been possible without the block set up by Mills.
Early in the play, Southerns
Ironhead Gallon was prepared
to stop Thomas before he even

reached the first-down marker.

However, the delay created by
Mills allowed Thomas to slip by
Gallon and break away for the
opening score. The play created
momentum that the Jackets did
not relinquish over the next three
quarters of play.
This sort of unselfish play is
what will differentiate Mills from
other talented runners who are
perhaps less willing to take the
dirty work required to succeed in
the Tech offense.
Despite its occasional offensive
struggles, the Jackets have a medley of talented runners, from the
speedy Qua Searcy to converted
receiver Clinton Lynch. Mills,
however, has come the closest to

filling Zach Laskeys role in the

vaunted 2014 unit: a power runner with a nose for the end zone
and the temperament to move the
chains in short-yardage situations
a key asset.
Make no mistake, Dedrick
Mills is still early in his Tech career. He has yet to play in a bowl
game and yet to face serious athletic adversity, a difficult injury or
a painful blunder.
However, while he does have a
lot to work on if he hopes to become even better, Mills is up for a
formidable challenge.
You either gonn go play, or
you aint gonn play, Mills said
of his preparation, So I just be
ready to play all the time.

Photo by Mark Russell Student Publications

Freshman running back Dedrick Mills breaks an arm tackle by a Georgia Southern defender. Mills
has not garnered media attention, but he has established himself as a critical offensive piece.

NITHI FROM PAGE 16

my second meet, ... people come
in with more experience, and
there were just so many expectations ... because I knew going in
that I had a good chance of winning the teen category.
I was nervous until my first
lift, my first squat, but once I hit
that, all my nerves started to settle
down. After my second lift, I was
like, This is fine.
Nithi and her trainers had done
their homework. They scouted her
competition and she knew the
numbers she needed to achieve to
move on. They were well within
her reach.
Her teammates within the GT
Barbell Club were instrumental to
her success.
Its basically a big community, Nithi said. A large part of it is
a community of people who come
together who like to lift. ... One
of the greatest things is how supportive everyone is. ... You have
people from different ages, different backgrounds who all come
together just to support you.
When it comes to that lift and
youre hit with your nerves and
there are people cheering you on,
that always means something.
At the end of the weekend,
Nithi waited with bated breath to
find out if she had made the cut
to accompany U.S. teammates
to Belarus next summer for the
international competition. She
quickly learned that she had.
I was just like, This is crazy.
The fact that I just started and
I was given this opportunity, I
think its still sinking in. ... I think
I was just lucky, too, with the meet
being in Atlanta, having all these
opportunities and resources.
Nithi has more competitions
to prepare for, between Arnold
Sports Festival, whose namesake
is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and
the World Championships. She is
no doubt a heavyweight contender moving forward.

technique October 21, 2016 15

// SPORTS

STEPHENS FROM PAGE 16

CASEY MILES

ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

As the football season wears
on, I continue to ask myself, Are
we still a football school?
The legacy of Tech football is
one of the richest in college football history. As one of the early
leaders at the collegiate level, it
seems that we would have big expectations to live up to, but more
and more Im beginning to feel
that isnt true.
The last time Tech won a National Championship was 1990,
26 years ago. Before that, it was
1952, a 38-year gap. It seems right
now that we are in a large dip in
terms of football performance.
Theoretically, we can bounce
back, but is the mindset at Tech
too far gone?
While the rest of college football has continued to evolve and
adapt, Techs program has seemingly stagnated. Is it because of
our offense? Is it because of our

Photo by John Nakano Student Publications

Tech players celebrate with fans after a victory at Bobby Dodd. Neither party has held up its end
over the past few seasons, and both might be to blame for tough recruiting and financial issues.

coaching staff? Do we not recruit

well? I think that these problems
are all symptomatic of a larger issue: a general sense of apathy that
is growing on campus.
This sense of apathy is not just
coming from one source, whether
it be the students, the staff or the
executives at Tech. Fingers can
be pointed at each and every demographic related to Tech, but I
generally think that everyone is to
blame as a collective.
Now, do Tech football fans
have a reason to be apathetic? Of
course. The team is not performing well, but instead of continuing to support the team in times

of adversity, fans have started

to abandon hope, finding other
things to do on Saturdays.
Fair-weather fans will always
exist, but it seems that people are
beginning to forget the past and
the bar it sets for the present and
future of Tech football.
This in turn creates a vicious
cycle of stagnation. If the football team doesnt perform well,
fan support drops and donors are
less likely to give money. When
donors are less likely to give money, the image of the team suffers.
When the image of the team suffers, recruiting suffers, which in
turn usually leads to poorer results

on the field than fans of an ACC

football school would demand.
To prevent this from happening, all of these steps must be
broken. The team must perform
up to or above its expectations to
encourage the fans and donors.
Then, the fans must continue to
support the team through thick
and thin and have faith in the
ability of the coaching staff and
the players.
The high of 2014 was followed
by an extreme low in 2015, and it
seems that this year will be in between. Either the team or its fans
and donors will have to budge to
achieve progress.

Stephens: I think were all

embracing the change right now.
We have so many new freshman
and new grad students, so everyone has to contribute to this
team. Last year, we had a few grad
students and lots of experience,
whereas this year, we dont have as
much experience on the court.
We have guys that are seniors
and grad students, but we dont
have as many guys that have
played those significant minutes
in the ACC. Thats a lot of opportunity to be taken.
Technique: Has Coach Pastner suggested new play styles or
play strategies?
Stephens: Yeah, I think were
playing at a higher pace. Were
moving the ball as opposed to
holding the ball letting it stick
and letting the defense set, but
ball movement and player movement are really what we emphasize right now.
Technique: And do you think
this will translate into wins?
Stephens: I believe so. I think
its going to be more exciting for
the fans and much better for the
recruiting base that we need to
develop.
Technique: What main goal
do you have for this season?
Stephens: My goal for this season is to fully establish the [basketball] culture here at Georgia
Tech. Weve had players that related to what Georgia Tech basketball is supposed to be, but overall
... my goal is that were all on the
same page and that were building
this culture the right way.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL

Showcase, Present, and Inspire

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH @ GT

gttower.org

Sports

SPORTS EDITOR:

Harsha Sridhar
ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR:

Casey Miles

sports@nique.net

Breaking the Cycle

technique

One writer explains why Tech football

has fallen behind, and how it can get
back on track.415

16

Friday,
October 21, 2016

Nithi to represent U.S. at World Championships

HARSHA SRIDHAR
SPORTS EDITOR

She waited four days. Four days

of preparing, sweating kilograms
and keeping herself warmed up
between events. Four days of consulting spreadsheets and trainers
to plan her strategy.
For Arthi Nithi, a powerlifter,
those 96 hours boiled down to a
matter of minutes.
Youre only given a minute to
complete your lift, Nithi said.
Its all timed. You do each lift
three times, so Im only on display
for a total of nine minutes.
Nithi left quite an impression
at the USA Powerlifting Nationals, held last weekend in downtown Atlanta. Her performance
earned her a spot on the United
States national team, alongside
whom she will compete next summer in Minsk, Belarus.
To understand how Nithi got
to that point, though, one must
understand the third-year New
Jersey natives beginnings. As
a senior at Wayne Valley High
School, she was inspired to improve her fitness.
When she came to Tech, she
found a community that was
ready to transform her from an
enthusiast into a competitor.
I joined [the Georgia Tech
Barbell Club] because I was ...
super into fitness, and there was
a mentorship program, and I was
like, You know what? Lets give
it a try.

Photo courtesy of Arthi Nithi

Third-year Arthi Nithi poses with her medal after a successful performance at USA Powerlifting
Raw Nationals. She will represent the U.S. in Minsk, Belarus, this coming summer at Worlds.

Her mentor was Fedor Klimov,

another Tech student and Barbell
Club veteran who immediately
noticed her talent.
She was doing a lifestyle fitness
routine, Klimov said. Nothing
serious. But after our first session,
I knew she had the potential to go
far in powerlifting.
Klimovs intuition was spoton: Nithi quickly displayed an

aptitude for the sport. As it so

happened, a gym run by Tech
and Barbell Club alumnus Obi
Anachebe and Citadel Nutrition
had just opened. It provided a perfect training space for Nithi.
Luckily, it was completed
right when I got into powerlifting, so that was the end of my
first semester, Nithi said of the
serendipitous timing. That gym

kind of has more equipment

geared towards competitive lifting. So I started going there,
and it just picked up from there.
I was training ... with the intent
of competing.
The training came with a cost.
In Summer 2015, she injured her
back after repetitive training. Not
knowing whether the pain was
caused by typical post-exercise

fatigue or something else, Nithi

pushed too hard.
[I] took a break from powerlifting, Nithi said of the next six
months of recovery. However, she
did not leave the gym.
I basically wasnt compressing my back or loading that much
weight on my back. ... By January
[2016], I was completely healed,
and thats when I started training
for my first competition.
That was Lift for Life, a local
meet at which Nithi would have
her first opportunity to impress
judges and begin paving her way
to the national competition.
Competitors have to meet certain marks in local or state competitions in order to advance. Nithi
made it on her first try.
From the summer onwards,
Nithi trained for nationals.
This actually ran four days,
and there were multiple platforms, Nithi said of nationals.
She was grouped by age class
and weight in order to ensure she
was competing against fair rivals.
The nerves leading into the
national competition were significant for Nithi, who was only
in her first full season as a powerlifter. Over the next four days,
her performance would determine
whether she was good enough to
represent her country.
I actually sweated half a [kilogram] the night before because
I was so nervous, Nithi said. It
sounds crazy, but I was so jittery
and so nervous. Because this was
see NITHI, page 14

QUINTON STEPHENS
MENS BASKETBALL
CHRIS JOSEY

CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Techs basketball team will
embark on a very different journey this season. Newly appointed
head coach Josh Pastner will seek
to make a name for himself and
his young team in the Atlantic
Coastal Conference arguably
the toughest basketball conference in Division I sports.
Leadership will fall upon
Quinton Stephens, a fourth-year
Atlanta native. He returns to the
roster as one of the most experienced players in the lineup and
the highest scorer returning from
the 201516 season.
Stephens recently sat down
with the Technique to discuss his

L and R: Photos courtesy of Danny Karnik

Senior Quinton Stephens stares down a defender (left) and jumps into action against Duke (right). The senior is the most prolific returning scorer from last season, and he will have to provide maturity and experience to a young team rebuilding under a new coach.

introduction to the sport, this

years team, new strategies and
basketball culture at Tech.
Technique: How long have
you been playing basketball?
Stephens: I officially started
playing when I was 9 years old.
My father was a professional basketball player; he played at Drexel
University. Then, he played overseas and coached overseas.
I actually quit basketball between the ages of 11 and 12 just
because ... I was fed up with the

way my dad was coaching me. On

my 12th birthday, I got back into
it. ... Ive been playing ever since.
Technique: What is your favorite arena to play at?
Stephens: I had a lot of fun
at Louisville last year. That was
awesome. ... [It was] our first visit
to Louisville, with them joining
the ACC. Plus, it was my birthday, and it made it that much
more special.
Technique: Do you have a favorite NBA team?

Stephens: My favorite NBA

team would probably be the [San
Antonio] Spurs just because I
like the way they move the ball.
I think they play the game well.
[I like] the Atlanta Hawks
also. After the Spurs won their
championship, the Hawks kind of
changed the way they were playing. They were moving the ball
much better, so I like the style of
play of the Hawks too.
Technique: Who is your favorite player to watch?

Stephens: My favorite player

of all time would have to be Steve
Nash. I remember watching him
play against the Hawks, and I just
fell in love.
Technique: So youre in love
with unselfish play?
Stephens: Yeah. ... I like seeing
the ball move.
Technique: Have you seen a
big change in the team after the
switch from Coach Gregory to
Coach Pastner?
see STEPHENS, page 15