Month: January 2017

Dixie State University students voiced their concerns for family student housing on campus.

According to DSU’s Data, around 9,000 students enrolled at DSU for fall 2016. Between the Dixie View Apartments and the Morgan Apartments, only 32 units are dedicated to students who are married and/or have children. With limited availability, those interested in applying to live in student family housing are put on a waiting list.

“We got on the waiting list, and they didn’t even contact us until a year later,” said James Beard, a senior music major from St. George. “We forgot we even applied for the [Morgan Apartments].”

As a result, these limited options force married students to find off-campus housing.

“I didn’t bother applying for [on-campus family student housing] because I heard it took so long,” said Josey Harris, a junior physical therapy assistant from Dubois, Idaho. “We end up paying more [for off-campus housing] just because we are married.”

Beard said looking for off-campus housing also poses other issues.

“It was hard just to find anything close to [DSU],” Beard said. “We called a bunch of apartment management places, and they said ‘we don’t have anything below $700 a month, so if you’re not able to afford that, don’t bother calling.’”

Jordan Noyes, a senior dental hygiene major from Cleveland, said her and her husband ended up living in a garage for several months because it was all they could afford in St. George. Noyes said she recommends getting on the DSU waiting list, but also broaden your search to Hurricane and Washington for cheaper apartments.

Some married couples also resort to living in single student housing. Avalon Apartments Manager Christian Styles said married couples can live in single student housing as long as they abide by the apartment’s regulations. For single student housing, the apartments are only same-sex oriented.

However, Braegger said he and his wife didn’t like the idea of living separately in single student housing, so finding an affordable place to live was stressful.

“[DSU] just needs more,” Beard said. “There are so few good family housing close to campus.”

Seth Gubler, director of resident housing and student life, said he isn’t aware of any plans to build additional student family housing. However, he said he heard there was interest from a private developer to potentially build student family housing.

“I know that if we build a second [on-campus housing] similar to [Campus View Suites] that we might convert some of our single student housing to family student housing,” Gubler said.

Noyes said integrating more family housing could possibly gather more revenue for DSU. Noyes said students take into account the limited housing available in St. George in comparison to other colleges up north.

“Although it isn’t a guarantee, it’s a plan DSU may consider in the future because there is a demand for family student housing,” Gubler said.

I never thought I would empathize with a murderer.

Kelly Luce’s first novel, “Pull Me Under,”portrays a fictional Japanese-American woman named Rio Silvestri. But Rio has a dark past; as a 12-year-old named Chirzuru Akitani and living in Japan, she murdered her bully. The novel focuses predominantly on the adult character Rio, who returned to Japan after the death of her estranged father, with glimpses of her horrifying past interspersed.

Some hints from the book help the reader pinpoint when Rio must have been a child in Japan. This is key to the story, because as a hafu, or mixed race child (half Irish and half Japanese), in Japan in the 1970s, Rio was set to be an outcast from her birth. One of this instances this is highlighted is when Rio returns to Japan

“‘Rio…’ he repeats after I introduce myself. ‘Interesting name.’ He peers at my nose. ‘Freckles!’ he cries, stepping back.

“‘Irish mother,’ I say. After nearly twenty years in the States, I’d forgotten about people like this. They look at you like they’re trying to get you in focus and failing. I’m short, with a small nose and fine bones; there is no doubting I’m East Asian. I used to stand at the bathroom mirror and pretend I was someone else, a stranger giving me a quick passing glance. Did I look Japanese enough?”

Examples of Rio’s identity struggles like this is where my empathy comes into play. I’m the same mix of Irish and Japanese, and Rio’s struggle of not quite fitting it truly resonated with me. While I never experienced anything as extreme as Rio, her psychological struggle with feeling like she was never a whole person is one that many people straddling cultures can understand.

Rio’s stranding between two identities adds layers to her story as she travels to Japan to attend her father’s funeral. While there, she begins to face her past and try to reconcile it to the life she leads now: troubled youth Chirzuru, versus wife and mother Rio.

Mechanically, the book was also interesting in that it started out in past tense, but after the opening chapter, moved into  present tense. Now, I’ve objected before to present tense narrative writing on the grounds it can feel forced and draw the reader out of the story. However, Rio’s internal turmoil demands the reader struggle with her, so the use of present tense is highly effective in this case.

“Pull Me Under” became available November 2016, and is being sold by most major booksellers. I wholeheartedly recommend this book and hope you can have that odd feeling of understanding a murderer.

Dixie Sun rating: 5 suns

More degrees are on their way to Dixie State University. 

The DSU board of trustees unanimously approved six additional or restructured degrees Friday at their first meeting of 2017. Expanded online education options and a new department in health care were also discussed at the meeting.

David Wade, director of academic planning, said the new degrees approved Friday will be the first wave of many degrees added at DSU in the next few years.

The new degrees coming to DSU include a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, a broadcasting emphasis within the media studies degree, a graphic design minor, a photography minor, a bachelor’s degree in information systems and data analytics, and a restructured medical laboratory science degree. The trustees also signed off on an entrepreneurship certificate and the Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center, which will replace the current East Elementary. 

“The great thing is most of these degrees require no additional funding and no additional courses,” Wade said. 

The only degree added that requires additional courses is the bachelor’s degree in information systems and data analytics, which will require two more courses in the CIT department.

Online education

DSU will also start to phase more classes into being taught online. 

Ryan Hobbs, the newly appointed director of distance and digital learning, announced his plan to the trustees to have 15 percent of DSU’s classes available online by 2020. Hired two weeks ago, Hobbs is the first director of distance and digital learning at DSU, President Biff Williams said.

“We’re about a decade behind in online education,” Hobbs said. “Having more classes online will hopefully help with retention of students at DSU, as there’ll be more opportunities for classes.”

New department in health care

The trustees also approved the creation of a new department of health care diagnostics and therapeutics at their meeting. This department will eventually offer a program in population health that will act as a “plan b” for students not accepted into the DSU nursing and dental hygiene programs, Wade said. 

Wade said they took counsel from an outside contractor who suggested DSU add a population health program, which is an approach to health that works to improve the health of an entire human population.

“Population health is in preventative care,” Wade said. “It seems to be a natural evolution from nursing and dental hygiene because it still deals with helping people.”

Construction updates

The two big construction projects planned for DSU in the future — the construction of the Human Performance Building and the renovation of Legend Solar Stadium — are well on their way to becoming reality, Williams said.

The first phase of the Legend Solar Stadium renovations will start Wednesday, when the stadium will be closed for the track to be ripped out and replaced. Legend Solar Stadium will have the improved track installed by June 30, Williams said.

The Human Performance Center is ranked as the No. 2 funding priority for the Utah legislature by the board of regents, Williams said. The Utah legislature will vote on funding the Human Performance Center during this year’s legislative session, which kicked off Monday. Williams said the plan is to start building the Human Performance Center by fall 2017. 

“I’m biased, but I’ve seen universities have less growth in five years than we’ll be having in one,” Williams said.

The IT Department at Dixie State University unintentionally exposed the personal data of 19 journalism scholarship students over the course of six days in November.

The incident occurred on the DSU website due to a configuration change that removed the security setting on the journalism scholarship page. This allowed anyone to view the journalism scholarship applications for 19 students online. Google accessed the page before IT re-secured the information and created a snapshot called a cached copy that still remained on Google for about two months.

The leaked information included in those applications were the names of the students, their birthdates, phone numbers, home address, emails, Dixie ID numbers, majors, GPAs and an optional resume attachment. Bank account information, transcripts and social security numbers were not required on the application, so they were not exposed.

“At this point, we’re not sure how the page got unsecure,” said Rex Frisbey, webmaster of information technology services at DSU. “Whether we were working on it and we accidentally hit the checkbox to unsecure it or if when we updated our production it missed the update — we’re not 100 percent sure.”

Information security officer Andrew Goble said the change to the page that allowed the data exposure was made on Nov. 9, 2016 and was later fixed on Nov. 15, 2016. Google’s bots accessed the page, indexed the information, and created a cached copy that was still accessible by January.

“So you had a six-day period where this page was accessible to anybody who knew how to look for it,” Goble said. “It wasn’t made intentionally; it was an accident.”

Wendy Stabler, a senior English major from Calgary, Canada, stumbled upon the exposed information on Jan. 10. by chance. Stabler said she was Googling an old website for a business she ran and her name, including all her private information and a PDF of her resume, pulled up.

“I’m concerned because my home address is now online,” she said. “My private cell phone number and my birthdate, now all that’s missing is my social security number. There were certain things that I had been really protective of and now they’re exposed. My concern is always identity theft, so if a hacker comes across this information, it’s not too tough with every other piece of information to get a social security card.”

Stabler immediately notified DSU IT of the security exposure, and they began working with Google to have the information taken down.

The DSU Information Security Office sent the affected students an email on Thursday, informing them of the security exposure that occurred with the DSU website in November along with assuring them that they worked with Google and the cached information was removed from their servers Jan. 13.

Hanna Pollock, a sophomore media studies major from Stansbury Park, said Stabler first made her aware of the information exposure — not the university — by telling her to Google herself.

“My phone number and address were on the internet for anyone to see,” Pollock said. “If a stalker wanted to look me up, he or she could easily find me and harass me over phone or by coming to my apartment. I don’t even know how long the information was visible to the public, so who knows what people could’ve done.”

Gary Koeven, the chief information officer at DSU, said the university has a specialized insurance policy for these sorts of incidents. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the university has no legal responsibility to notify the students in this case because no social security number, financial data or credit card information was exposed. 

“The risk of any of these students having any problem because of this seems very very low,” Koeven said. “But still, we should’ve protected that information. There was a mistake that was made with the web that caused it to happen, so we decided we would have an abundance of caution and let the students know what had happened.”

Although insurance isn’t going to cover it, according to the email DSU sent the students, the university is offering each of the 19 students a year of complimentary Experian’s ProtectMyID Alert as a precaution.  

Pollock said DSU and the IT department need to take situations like this more seriously. 

“The IT department at DSU isn’t as secure as I originally thought,” she said. “They sent a mass email as an apology, but that doesn’t protect me from what they’ve already released. They need to hire more professional people who take our privacy seriously.”

Students were divided about whether living on campus or off was better. 

An apartment at Campus View Suites can run up to $1400 a semester for a shared room, and $2000 for a single, said Zach Horlacher, a senior criminal justice major from Mesquite. He said cost is the biggest issue when deciding where to live.

However, Elese Clayton, an exercise science major from American Fork, said her husband found an apartment ten minutes from the campus for only $1200 a semester. 

“It is great living off campus because it helps me focus more on my homework and get away from the drama that happens; also, it is nice being able to choose your roommate and not have to worry about that,” Clayton said.

Horlacher had his own reasons for preferring to live on campus, he said.

“I rarely drive my car, and I can walk pretty much anywhere because campus is so small Horlacher said. It’s really hard to be late to class.” 

He said a small campus can help him be more fit and social, but it has its drawbacks.

“The worst part is that sometimes it is hard to get away from a lot of the noise because student housing is so packed, and it feels like there is always someone trying to disturb you,” Horlacher said.

Living away does have its problems as well, Clayton said.

“We would probably be more encouraged to get out more if we lived next to people closer to our age and demographic, instead of in a neighborhood full of families,” said Clayton.

Another aspect aside from the cost and the close neighbors, is the social life, Horlacher said.

“It’s easy to make friends on campus because because you are always surrounded by people, and it just forces you to get familiar with the people you tend to see around,” Horlacher said. He said he was impressed with all of the activities on campus, especially the “Wednes-D” activities.

Some students cannot decide if the benefits of living on campus outweigh the cons, such as Elise Cole, a sophomore nursing major from Salt Lake. She has spent two years at Dixie State University and will be transferring to Utah Valley University. 

“I’ve lived with my parents while here at Dixie, and I don’t think I want to live on campus,” Cole said. “I like not mixing my social life with my academic one, and I really enjoyed not having a roommate. I don’t feel I could really be comfortable being on campus all the time, and think that you have to take a break to not get sucked into the school and all of it’s issues.”

Dixie State University Campus Police responded to several reports of possible burglaries occurring at Campus View Suites and in dorm parking lots between 3 and 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 18.  

Seth Gubler, Director of Housing and Resident Life, said a man with a hoody, carrying a snowboard was caught on camera wandering through Campus View Suites.

Gubler called and reported the incident to Campus Police around 3:30 a.m.

“At the beginning of each semester, we hold a mandatory resident training,” Gubler said. “In order to help keep students safe, we also give an education handbook to each students with included safety information.”

Lindsey Hope, a junior secondary education major from West Jordan, is one of the 16 resident assistants for the Campus View Suites. 

“Campus View doors automatically lock at 5 p.m. and re-open at 8 a.m. each day,” Hope said. “In order to gain access to the building, you must have a key card, and each individual apartment has a key lock for both the outside and the bedroom doors.” 

Don Reid Director of Campus Police and Security, said “this is an ongoing investigation, and forthcoming information will be coming in the future.” 

More information will be published as soon as it becomes available. 

Those who have a goal of maintaining diversity on Dixie State University’s campus said there will always be more to be done.

After a new position called the Diversity Inclusion Coordinator for DSU Student Association was created, more positions were added to help diversity on DSU’s campus.

Mike Nelson, outreach coordinator for the Multicultural and Inclusion Center, said the MIC is continuing to build the MIC’s Student Council by adding the first Multicultural Student President.

“[The president is] the voice for minority and underrepresented students on campus,” Nelson said. “[The president will] advocate for students, meeting with the student body president about any concerns affecting minority students.” 

A position at the MIC also became available in October. Daneka Souberbielle, the former interim director of intercultural engagement, is now the director of the MIC after Christina Duncan left the position and DSU. Duncan declined to comment on why she left. 

Duncan left her position as the Diversity and Inclusion Fellow under President Biff Williams as well. General Counsel Doajo Hicks, who is now the Chief Diversity Officer, has replaced Duncan’s position as the Chief Officer of Diversity.

“[My position] is really just trying to assist with diversity university-wide,” Hicks said. 

After some students expressed concern in a Dixie Sun News’ article titled “Diversity at DSU: New position on DSUSA to encourage diversity at DSU” about not knowing there was a MIC center or not feeling welcomed, Nelson said students not knowing there is a center for minority students is a priority.

“We continue to market our services and new location to students year round,” Nelson said. “I have seen a increase of students since our move from the basement of the [Student Activities Center].” 

Hicks said one of his main goals as Chief Officer of Diversity is to not only support and promote the MIC, but to “hopefully” one day have students go through the MIC if a minority scholarship or other service is needed. 

When it comes to diversity at DSU, Nelson said the MIC’s work will never be done. The main focus for the MIC this semester is DSU’s latino population. Nelson said the latino population is the largest minority student population, and having access to this population and materials in Spanish is important.

“There are always groups that will need support, and that’s why we’re here,” Nelson said.