Texas A&M University-San Antonio Class of 2011

Dear University Friends

The end of the academic year approaches and commencement is just around the corner.  For those of

us on The Mesquite staff who are seniors, there is no time for senioritis. There are articles to finish and

final exams to complete. For many of us, it’s the one last “trial-by-caffeine” we will experience as

undergraduates, one last chance to “boom or bust” before we hit the pavement in the professional

world.

The Mesquite is a seedling we planted this year.  As it grows, it will become vitally important to the

student body, staff and administration. As a communication tool, it helps spread the word about the

events on our campus and has the potential to tell the story of who we are.  More than a digital news

source, it will become a hub of university life and an opportunity to examine, discuss, explain, critique,

criticize and stay connected. While our main goal is to offer you a digital news source you can access

from home, work or school, in the near future we will also offer you a “best in show” print edition to

hold in your hands. The Mesquite will grow and evolve as much by our direction as through your

feedback. Stay connected and let us know how we can inform and entertain you.

As inaugural staff members of A&M-San Antonio’s first student newspaper, we have seen our first

amendment rights supported by our University leaders. Administrators  have provided a platform for us

to discuss issues and opinions, but we also must become protectors.  Protect your right to learn by

remembering that learning doesn’t stop here.  Ask hard questions of others and yourself, demand

straight answers, keep your facts real and your opinions objective.  Most of all keep learning. In the

world, or in the classroom, we are all both students and teachers.

When we leave, we take with us the wealth of knowledge and first-hand experience gained from our

education at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.  What we leave behind is a footprint, a path of

pebbles for those who come next, to build and improve upon. Perhaps we’ll have a brick around the

fountain in the courtyard of our new multipurpose administration building slated to open this fall, after we

are gone.

Best of luck to my fellow 2011 graduates, the next staff of The Mesquite, and our loyal readers.

My sincere thanks to the amazing professors, dedicated staff and pioneering leaders of Texas A&M

University-San Antonio. I look forward to watching you grow.

Tammy Busby

Editor-In-Chief, Spring 2011

Spotlight on Veterans Support Services

Click Here to see the interview with Texas A&M University-San Antonio's Veterans Support Officer, Richard Delgado, Jr.

Two TAMU-SA students receive prestigious Warren Fellowship

The Warren Fellowship for Future Teachers will answer those questions first-hand this coming June 5-11 for twenty-five specially selected education students, known as Warren Fellows.  Two of those students, Effie Baeza and Barbara Baker, are seniors from Texas A&M University-San Antonio.  They will travel to the Holocaust Museum Houston for a week-long immersion program, where eminent Holocaust and genocide scholars and museum staff provide educational and outreach opportunities, including the opportunity to meet and work with Holocaust survivors, like Naomi Warren who survived two Nazi camps.


Education major Barbara Baker, a senior wants to be a sixth grade social studies teacher.  She is certified in international studies and says she looks forward to strengthening her ability to teach love and appreciation through humanities, civil rights and culture.  The Holocaust left its mark in her own family history.

“I have a deep personal interest in the Holocaust.  My grandparents and great-grandparents were Hungarian immigrants who came to the U.S. to escape persecution,”  explained Baker.  “They changed their last name and began sending for their other family members.”  


Effie Baeza is a student of bilingual and special education. She said that special education children have a right to the same knowledge as other students, and often have a keen understanding and awareness of culture.  People with learning disabilities are usually very aware of persecution directed at those who are considered different.



“One person can breed hate and it will spread like wildfire,” Baeza said. She told The Mesquite that she is looking forward to the opportunity to raise awareness in schools by introducing the subject to all of her students.

2007 Warren Faculty Fellow, and Texas A&M-San Antonio professor of education and kinesiology, Robin Kapavik, encourages her students to apply for the program.  Since 2008, one to two TAMU-SA students have received this honor each summer.  

Effie Baeza and Barbara Baker, Texas A&M University-San Antonio Seniors

Inner City With Style

For the past fifteen years, Linda Aguilar has been coordinating, promoting and coaching some of San Antonio's finest hidden talent.  These kids are not just entertaining, they are gifted.  They come to her at various stages. One twelve-year old girl was painfully shy when she began singing.  Through practice, exposure, and Linda's genuine loving care, and with God's blessings, she would remind you, the young singer flowered.  Today Harley Steele, and her long-time sidekick, Johnny Love can be found rehearsing together preparing for their next show.  Their talents are extraordinary, and you will notice right away that they have put much time and effort into their vocal performances.

Aguilar's non-profit theatrical group has evolved over the years.  She began with a group of two, then added a few more kids and began entertaining at a San Antonio nursing home.  Pretty soon, requests began coming for performances at community events.  Now her group, Inner City With Style is honored with requests to entertain at corporate fundraising events, TAMU-SA's last fall festival, city events like the recent Graffiti Wipeout Celebration, and even the New Year's Eve celebration at the Arneson River Theater.  Though the group performs free at these types of functions, it uses any donations to purchase music, costumes and materials to directly benefit the kids.

Groups like this with dedicated directors like Aguilar, who is a student at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, can be a springboard to a career in entertainment, a channel for talented young people to gain the experience and practice they need to become polished performers with confidence and stage presence. Youngsters like the extremely talented mariachi singer, Sebastian DelaCruz, a nine-year-old vocal prodigy who recently won the San Antonio Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza competition, the largest of its kind in Texas.  In any case, behind any one of the success stories of these talented children, there will be Aguilar, cheering, critiquing and praying every minute that they will have the opportunity to fulfill their true potential and share their gifts with the world.

Check out three of the many wonderful performances, posted on YouTube, by clicking on photo captions below:

Littlest Mariachi  

Johnny Love & Harley Steele

La Tejanita

Houston, we have lift off – The Mesquite launch successful

On March 9, 2011 The Mesquite, the student newspaper of Texas A&M University-San Antonio, was officially launched with a party which included special guests Dr. Maria Hernandez Ferrier and Mr. Tino Duran, publisher of La Prensa. Duran told those in attendance about his experience beginning a newspaper, and reminded Mesquite reporters and staff that he has an open door for them. Duran has supported Texas A&M University-San Antonio by making a large financial contribution, and is planning another donation of funds in the near future.

The first of many to come, Mesquite Source Awards were distributed to recognize the contributions made by those who have categorically supported the news process for TAMU-SA’s brand new student-run news outlet. Winners were recognized with certificates and “Branch Out” T-Shirts with the Mesquite News logo.

Drawings for prizes totaling several hundred dollars were held throughout the two-hour celebration.

• Comedy Club Tickets courtesy of La Prensa went to Gabriel Calderan, Marilyn Spell, Anaiah Liserio and Juan Garcia.
• Tymrak Enterprises donated several gifts; an I-Tunes gift card won by Betty Villegas, Best Buy gift card won by Chris Ramos, and a Valero gas card won by Michael Ruiz.
• Longhorn Steakhouse provided a gift card won by Jenny Rodriguez.
• The Egg & I donated several gift certificates, one of which went to Brandy Weitzel.
• Wireless Toyz donated a gift certificate won by Shaun Springfield.
• Several dozen lucky attendees also took home The Mesquite’s “Branch Out” t-shirts.

In addition to snacks and the celebratory cake, (TRIGAS?) provided helium and balloons added to the festive feel inside the Student Center at the Gilette campus.  Disc jockey and Mesquite reporter, Cornelius Ontiveros, provided equipment and music for the celebration.

Mesquite staff, reporters and junior reporters were on hand to walk students and faculty through the new Mesquite website on the projection screen, providing everyone a chance to see the extensive news, services and information now available at mesquite-news.com.    

Video:175th Anniversary of the Alamo

Click here for video.

Article: Newsgiant Dan Rather Visits San Antonio

By Tammy Busby
On an uncomfortably cold winter night, with the mercury registering just 23 degrees, 100 people lined the hallways of the McAllister Fine Arts Center on the campus of San Antonio College for a public lecture by renowned CBS newsman Dan Rather.

In all, nearly 1,000 attendees filled the auditorium to hear Dan Rather’s speech, with overflow sent to the mezzanine level.  The ratio of aspiring young journalists and students to older members of the San Antonio community was 1 to 4.  Many guests in attendance said they feel as though he is a trusted friend and were eager to hear from him in person and pay their respects.

For students of journalism, he offered several key pieces of advice:

• “First, give yourself a head check.”  Determine if it is something you feel you have to do, because it demands commitment.  List ahead of time, what you will and won’t do.
• “Second,” he stressed, “learn to write. If we had spell check in 1954, I might still be a newspaper man.”
• For those who prefer to simply consume the products of journalism, he recommends exploring many sources of news.  “Be conversive on the Internet…Ask yourself, ‘Who stands to gain from this point of view?   Who do I believe is an honest broker of information?’
• “Demand integrity the media. Challenge yourself to take the news seriously. Get worked up about the news, and let the [station] owner know.”  It is the public’s responsibility to demand accuracy and truth.
• And lastly, “Don’t let them scare you.  Ask tough questions until they’ve been answered.  Questioning authority may be the purest form of patriotism.”

During the lecture, listeners learned that like many men in the Depression era, Dan Rather’s father did not have formal schooling after 8th grade.  But he said he recognized, at the early age of 5 or 6, the importance of the news.  His father subscribed to many newspapers and they would surround his armchair “like ammo in a foxhole.”  Sometimes his father would be reading an article and jump out of his chair yelling about something printed there, or someone’s butchery of truth.  The newspaper would become a missile.  His father’s passion impressed on him the importance of the news.

Another formative development in Rather’s love for journalism was his childhood bout with rheumatic fever, which left him bedridden.  “The radio became my best friend,” he said.  Through radio journalists like Edward R. Murrow, and his “This is London” broadcast, a young Rather became enamored with the “listener’s magic carpet.”

Rather obtained his first job in media as a young college student before the era of financial aid.  Hired by KSAM radio in Huntsville, Texas, for 40 cents an hour, his passion for investigative journalism was ignited by a simple assignment for a house fire call.  With a little sleuthing, he was able to uncover not only a crime of arson, but the fact it was set to disguise a murder committed by a prominent citizen.  When he took the story to his boss, he was cautioned that by breaking the story, “Not everyone will love you or respect you…You’re gonna catch hell all the way around.” Rather reminisced how his boss then “conveniently left town for a couple of weeks.” Rather prefers to identify with “the press” over “the media,”  a difference he describes as follows:

“Media is any news with a constructed mission at its core.  Press is the raw material of democracy.”

Rather reminded the audience that the first amendment of the United States Constitution protects the freedom of the press, right in front with freedom of religion and freedom of speech. “Media is content,” Rather said. “It looks and sounds like news, but it entertains for a profit.  The Press,” he declared, “ is the red beating heart of the people.”

In today’s world where “the idea of distance is an illusion,” Dan Rather reminds us that world events have repercussions that traverse the globe.  Our ‘Great Recession’ is causing economic waves of unrest in China.  Our troops are still in Afghanistan.  Egypt is in turmoil.

Because of our principles of freedom and democracy, our nation’s journalists are, according to Rather, “on the razor’s edge of danger.  We want to be true to ideals, but also to survive.  And those two ideas may be irreconcilable.”

Article: Snow in SA?

http://mesquite-news.com/2011/02/snow-in-san-antonio/

Article: Touched by Mission Reach

The Mesquite  2/22/11

Touched by Mission Reach

The Espada aqueduct was built in 1740 and used by missionaries and natives for irrigating crops.

By Tammy Busby

The San Antonio River, known to the Coahuiltecan Indians as Yanaguana, stretches out into a lazy flow of lifegiving water to egrets, ducks, turtles and other wildlife to the south including small mammals, deer and javelina. I have spent many wonderful hours with my family enjoying this stretch of the river, on foot and on bicycles. The missions are San Antonio’s hidden jewels.

***

After weeks of cranky winter weather, it’s a clear blue-skied, cloudless day in San Antonio. At last, a weekend to get outside. Experiences are what my family and I are looking for —  opportunities to work or play that give us a chance to stretch ourselves individually, but also as a team.  As a single mom in today’s economic climate, I look for things that bring my family together and are inexpensive or cost nothing at all. Sometimes we look for pure entertainment, but more often, we find ways to become involved with the community and to connect with the history of San Antonio.

There is nothing that can beat the sense of adventure that carries us down the Mission Trail, as though the river itself flows through our imagination; we become cowboys on a trail ride with our bicycles as our steeds, or merchants of hope with baby strollers as handcarts and wagons, pioneers on a spiritual mecca for health and peace.

I have spent many wonderful hours with my family enjoying this stretch of the river, on foot and on bicycles. The missions are San Antonio’s hidden jewels.

New Priorities Take Over Neglect

Until the late 1990s, the role of the missions in our area’s historic beginnings have been largely ignored, not just by residents, but by developers and city leaders. But now the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, and the San Antonio River Authority, along with the National Park Service and the Army Corp of Engineers have joined forces and reserved $353 million ($275 million earmarked for the Mission Reach portion) for a multi-phase river improvement project. This project was designed to restore historical connections, create recreational opportunities and address the ecosystem of the San Antonio River.

The recently completed Museum Reach phase of the project is proving to be an economic boon for businesses along the stretch of river from downtown to the Witte Museum. Tourists can now enjoy an extended boat ride from downtown to the Pearl Brewery to enjoy art galleries and an outdoor farmer’s market.

But, what about Mission Reach?

South Side Explorations

I obtained a bike map from Centro San Antonio, a partner organization of the Downtown Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to making downtown San Antonio a better place to live, work, eat and play.   I set out on my motor scooter to have a look at the 13-mile Mission Reach phase, and made some interesting discoveries. It is not exactly easy to get to, even by roadway.  A thriving city has grown up around the trail system.

Because the South Side is an area plagued by crime, with lower household incomes and lower home values than the other areas of the city, it is important to reconnect residents with the historical roots of the city.   Revitalization of areas around the project through rezoning and an infusion of interest and investment from nonprofits and the City of San Antonio represent an important social acknowledgement of the working-class people who live and work there.  It promotes a sense of pride and belonging and has fostered longterm care for the missions.

From Cement Ditch to Revitalized Natural Area

At the ancient aqueduct, I met Frances and Chris Chavez, a young San Antonio couple enjoying a bike ride from downtown to the south end of the mission trail with two friends enrolled at UTSA.

Closure signs dot the trail, showing that though work has begun, it won't be complete until all the parts are joined.

Frances, a nurse at Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, said that in its current stage of development, the Mission Reach trail seems a bit dangerous because the bike lanes start and stop in so many places.  She doesn’t like to bike with traffic.  Her husband and friends agreed that the south reach is special because it feels like a different place.  The trail, she said, is a taste of history and a wonderful place to take a break from the hectic life of work and school.

In the Mission Reach, the manicured landscape seen on the Riverwalk is replaced by natural areas of rolling hills of switchgrass and groves of oak and mesquite. The chatter of tourists is replaced by the chirping killdeer, wrens and swallows, and if you’re lucky, the call of the great blue heron or a red-shouldered hawk.

The river, known to the Coahuiltecan Indians as Yanaguana, stretches out into a lazy flow of lifegiving water to egrets, ducks, turtles and other wildlife to the south including small mammals, deer and javelina. The trail along the bank may be paved now, but it follows a path that has been trod by man and beast for hundreds of years.  The importance of the river to civilization and salvation is evident by the locations of five of the oldest mission settlements in the United States.

Matthew Driffill, an education specialist for the San Antonio River Authority, is helping train a staff of 12-14 volunteers from Alamo Area Master Naturalists to give tours of phase one of the Mission Reach project.  Driffell says he and his co-workers call it the Pride of the South Side. He has seen the transformation of the river move from a  cement ditch and path to nowhere, to a beautiful public area that uses modern resources and technology to restore this important flood-control area closer to its natural state, a process called fluvial geomorphology.

The Mission Reach project began phase one, easily accessible to the public at Roosevelt Park, by removing 3 million cubic yards of concrete, engineered and poured decades ago by the Army Corp of Engineers in a flood management program that straightened out the river in an effort to keep flash floods from destroying downtown.  Driffill points out that it was roughly the amount of material used to build Hoover Dam.

Next the banks were sloped, and to control erosion, biodegradable coir logs made of coconut fiber were incorporated for a terraced effect.  Mixtures of 60 species of grasses were strategically planted to hold the soil in place.  After the current plantings have had a chance to establish their growth, over 39 species of trees will be introduced.  The 24,000 seedlings are already being grown off-site.

Other features were introduced in the river itself, the flow of the water now slowed by weirs (small dams), and incorporation of wetland areas where standing water attracts wildlife.  Even drain tunnels are now nearly invisible in the clever landscaping.  The old CPS power plant looms on the east bank, its fate under consideration.  Perhaps it will become another tourist and community hub like the Pearl Brewery up north.  The metal towers that once hummed with electricity are silent.  Or, are they?  Driffill points to a huge nest, perhaps 5 feet in diameter, in the transom of two towers, where apparently a big green parrot, perhaps an escaped pet, has decided to take up residence with a penthouse view of the project.

Placed high on the west bank sits a strategically placed bench. From it I see the river with its fresh new face, meandering as it should, on its way south under a railroad bridge and a traffic bridge with the dome of the Mission San Jose sitting proudly on the distant horizon. A pedestrian footbridge has been completed. Its large square colorful stones gently glow at night like confetti from a cascarone, a traditional symbol of good luck.

Mission Espada, the first mission in Texas, was built in 1690.

At Mission San Francisco de la Espada, the southernmost and closest mission to Texas A&M-San Antonio, the smell of barbecue filled the air at the south gate.  A bride posed for pictures outside the chapel built in 1756.  The community building is filled with the sound of rejoicing and outside it I meet James Villanueva, Youth Director at Mission Espada.

Villanueva says he likes that more people are beginning to enjoy the mission for recreational purposes. There have been some minor problems with vandalism; the rest stop bathrooms had to be closed because of problems. But, for the most part, people are respectful of the landmark.

The trails have become a popular destination for cyclists, Villanueva says, and every Saturday morning up to 30 dogs and owners show up to train and enjoy the grounds. Villanueva remains excited about the growth and the future of the mission.

A Vision Realized, Phase by Phase

Phase one of the Mission Reach development is complete, and construction work is visible in the area along Mission Road at the Riverside Golf Course.  The far reaches of the mission trail remain in waiting for the river’s facelift that is sure to bring more visitors.  The remaining two phases total $120 million of the overall $353 million investment, and are expected to be completed in 2013.

Phase two and three of the project broke ground one year ago this Saturday and stretch from San Pedro Creek to Mission Espada south of Loop 410, where the dirt has begun to move.

Piles of bed and surface materials wait at intervals along the way.  Small improvements such as benches, water fountains and waste bins can be seen, but many ‘trail closed’ signs dot the route, reminders of the work in progress and the promise that if you build it, they will come.

If you go, plan ahead. Here is a list of helpful sites and resources:

San Antonio River Improvements Project:http://www.sanantonioriver.org/mission_reach/project_facts.php
San Antonio River Bike Trail System map:
http://www.sara-tx.org/parks_and_trails/images/bike-trail_8-4-2010.pdf
San Antonio Missions National Historical Park:
http://www.nps.gov/saan/index.htm