Issuu

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From sea to shining sea A&M dean to bike-race across America for charity Sean Lester The Battalion

ummer at Texas A&M can be a time for some of the 50,000 students and 2,800 faculty to relax for several months after the school year. For José Bermúdez the summer season is entirely the opposite. Bermúdez is the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at A&M and considers his hobby of cycling a job in itself. Bermúdez isn’t your afternoon rider around the neighborhood. On Tuesday he will compete in the 3,000-mile Race Across America that includes more 170,000 feet of climbing from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md. Bermúdez trains in Bryan-College Station and the surrounding cities, riding 20-30 hours a week. He noticed some poverty-stricken areas during his rides that inspired him to make a difference. “I think that all of us working in Bryan-College Station and at

A&M need to be very sensitive to the news in our community, and it’s not as wealthy of a community as you might think,” Bermúdez said. “I cycle around and see all ends of the income spectrum. I think Habitat for Humanity is an organization that really works effectively to relieve some of the problems that families have when trying to make a fresh start.” Bermúdez set out to raise the amount of money it would cost to build one Habitat home, $40,000, through sponsorships that include per-mile donations and milestones along the ride. “He decided he wanted to make this bike ride that he’s doing benefit somebody,” said Ryan Pierce, director of volunteer experience and communications at B-CS Habitat for Humanity. “He did some research mostly online and found Habitat and decided it was a good organization to support. He actually contacted us so it was all on his own ambition.” See Bike on page 3

I think that all of us working in BryanCollege Station and at A&M need to be very sensitive to the news in our community, and it’s not as wealthy of a community as you might think. I cycle around and see all ends of the income spectrum.” — José Bermúdez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts

COURTESY

(Top to bottom) José Bermúdez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, rides through the Yarnell Grade in Arizona during the 2011 Race Across the West. A map shows the 3,000-mile route of the Race Across America, in which Bermúdez will compete starting Tuesday.

track&field

A&M teams enter national championship as favorites Sean Lester The Battalion

xpectations for head coach Pat Henry and the Texas A&M track teams are the highest they’ve been since back-to-back-to-back men’s and women’s national championships from 2009-2011. Both the No. 1 Aggie men and No. 2 women will compete for the NCAA Championships Wednesday through Saturday at the University of Oregon, the same site where each team claimed its titles in 2010. “I’m very pleased with the group we have here,” Henry said. “We’re in good shape and in good spirits. I’m just ready to get the competition started. This is a group where we have some people who have been here before and we have a lot of young ones who are excited about being here too. We have a good balance of talent.” The Aggie men moved up to No. 1 after a strong showing in the NCAA preliminary rounds. A&M jumped over Arkansas and Or-

Catch all the action Courtesy of Aggie Athletics

Senior thrower Sam Humphreys hurls his javelin at a track and field meet. Humphreys broke his record in the NCAA preliminary rounds with a throw of 268 feet, 8 inches.

inside b-cs | 3 Ol’ Ag returns Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture, Todd Staples, visited Aggieland on Wednesday to sign copies of his new book on immigration and border security.

sports | 2 NBA Finals After a stinging defeat in 2007, LeBron James looks get back at the San Antonio Spurs in the upcoming NBA Finals, beginning Thursday.

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The Division 1 Outdoor Track and Field Championships will take place through Saturday with live coverage available on ESPNU (Friday and Saturday).

state

Lone Star College shooting suspect no-shows court date HOUSTON (AP) — A suspect in a Houston-area college campus shooting has been declared a fugitive after he failed to appear at a scheduled court appearance. A bench warrant has been issued for 22-year-old Trey Foster’s arrest. Harris County sheriff’s spokeswoman Christina Garza said Foster was declared a fugitive after he failed to appear for a scheduled Tuesday court date in Houston. Foster had been free on

$50,000 bond after he was charged with aggravated assault in the Jan. 22 shooting at a Lone Star College campus north of downtown Houston. Authorities believe 25-yearold Jody Neal was shot after bumping into Foster. The two men argued at first but went their separate ways. Investigators say they encountered each other 30 minutes later, argued again and Foster fired at Neal. Two others were wounded.

egon to take the top spot while former No. 1 Florida fell to No. 4. The A&M men were led by a school record in the preliminary rounds, as senior javelin thrower Sam Humphreys broke his own record with a throw of 268 feet, 8 inches: the top mark in the preliminaries. “I really only wanted to do the one-and-done, but I messed up on my first throw,” Humphreys said. “I felt good today and wasn’t expecting that far of a throw. I’m just elated to be going to nationals for a fourth consecutive year. Now I’ll have to see what I can at nationals.” A&M’s preliminary success was also aided by triple-jumper Dave Brown who won the event See Track on page 2

I’m very pleased with the group we have here. We’re in good shape and in good spirits. I’m just ready to get the competition started. This is a group where we have some people who have been here before and we have a lot of young ones who are excited about being here too. We have a good balance of talent.” — Pat Henry, A&M track and field head coach

English 101

Jessica Smarr — THE BATTALION

Molly McGee, senior English major, gives English lessons to mechanical engineering major Yongkyun Kim on Wednesday afternoon in Evans Library.

6/5/13 11:00 PM

sports

page 2 thursday 6.6.2013

thebattalion

Photos courtesy of Aggie Athletics

The Division 1 Outdoor Track and Field Championships take place through Saturday. The Aggies won back-to-back-to-back men’s and women’s national titles from 2009-2011.

Track Continued from page 1

with a leap of 53 feet, reaching the Aggie all-time list. “I was a little nervous coming into the meet because I really wanted to go to nationals to contribute to the team. That’s what this meet is all about,” Brown said. “This past week I was studying film to see what I could do to get better. During this whole meet I did exactly what I needed to do to get better today.” The A&M women remain No. 2 as No. 1 Kansas kept its first spot. The women’s 4x100 team cruised to a victory in the preliminary round. The Aggie women will have 12 athletes with 16 entries among nine events: eight entries in the sprints and hurdles, two relays,

three jumpers, one thrower and two in the heptathlon. The A&M men will have 17 athletes with 20 entries in 12 events: 10 entries in the sprints and hurdles, a pair of middle distance runners, three distance races, one relay one jumper and three throwers. All will combine to form one group looking to set records once again at a familiar venue in Oregon. “That’s the thing about Eugene, Ore., this is a track capital,” Henry said. “These people know the sport, the athletes and who is good in each event. They want the University of Oregon to win, there is no question about it, and there will be 18,000 to 20,000 people screaming and hollering for Oregon. However, they also recognize and respect the talent from other schools and that is a fun environment.”

Back in NBA Finals, James can get back at Spurs MIAMI (AP) — Before reaching the top of basketball, LeBron James was run over by the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs swept James’ Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2007 NBA Finals, so long ago that the winning game plan focused on exploiting James’ weaknesses. Those are nearly impossible to find now, and James essentially warned the Spurs that they shouldn’t bother looking. The Spurs already know. “He’ll be a lot more of a problem than he was in ‘07, that’s for sure,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said Wednesday. Tim Duncan told the beaten James minutes after that series that the league would someday belong to him, and he was right. The NBA’s MVP guided Miami to last year’s championship and the league’s best record this season. Now the Spurs will try to take it back. But James is now the best player in the game, is surrounded by more talent in Miami than he ever had in Cleveland, and still carries the memory of the beating the Spurs laid on him six years ago. “I have something in me that they took in

‘07. Beat us on our home floor, celebrated on our home floor. I won’t forget that. You shouldn’t as a competitor. You should never forget that,” James said. He was just 22 at the end of his fourth year in the league when he carried to the Cavs to their first finals appearance. But there were holes in his game, from an unreliable jump shot to an undeveloped post game, and the Spurs took advantage of every one of them. But Popovich said that may not be the case this year. “Well, LeBron is a different player than he was in ‘07,” Popovich said. “That was like ancient history. We were very fortunate at that time to get him so early. But at this point he’s grown.” James wasn’t interested in discussing much of that series, but he recalled the way the Spurs’ strategy kept him from getting into the paint and dared him to shoot jumpers. There’s no blueprint now that would encourage a guy who made 56.5 percent of his shots this season to shoot the ball. “If you go under my pick-and-roll now, I’m going to shoot. And I’m confident I’m

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a sweep of Memphis on May 27. The Heat were forced to overcome a rugged Indiana team and the struggles of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in a seven-game series that wrapped up Monday. That set up a finals between teams built in decidedly different ways but with mutual respect. While others around the league seethed, Popovich even called Pat Riley to offer congratulations after the Heat architect signed James and Bosh in 2010. The Spurs’ Big Three didn’t have to endure the same wait to win. Duncan won a title in just his second season, and Parker was only 21 when he earned his first. Yet eventually they stalled, so they’re as eager for this opportunity as James. “When I was 21 and I won my first one, it was kind of fast and we think it’s going to happen every year. We think it’s easy. But after a lot of years in the league, you realize it’s really hard to go to the finals,” Parker said. “Now we take nothing for granted. We appreciate every moment, and we’ll see what happens.”

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going to make every last one of them,” James said. “I’m just more confident in my ability to shoot the ball.” Duncan and James probably wouldn’t have thought it would take so long to see each other in the finals again after their meeting in the hallway of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena. San Antonio had built a quiet dynasty, winning four titles in nine years, and the core of Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili would keep giving the Spurs chances. But they couldn’t get out of the West even while finishing with the best record in the conference the last two years, just as Cleveland couldn’t in the East during James’ last two seasons there. “I hoped to be back here. Whether he would be here or not, I couldn’t predict that,” the 37-year-old Duncan said. “Knowing the player that he was then and the trajectory he was on, I had no doubt he would be back here. I had no doubt he would be tops in this league at some point. And I’m glad and honored to be back here playing against him.” The Spurs have been off since finishing

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6/5/13 9:31 PM

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page 3 thursday 6.6.2013

thebattalion

Bike Continued from page 1

COURTESY

José Bermúdez will participate in the Race Across America, a 3,000-mile, nonstop bicycle race that has competitors ride from Oceanside, Calif., to Annapolis, Md.

Bermúdez got his start cycling after moving to the United States from Britain, where he enjoyed extreme sports such as mountaineering and ice climbing. His adventures took him to the Swiss Alps and the Himalayas. Upon moving to St. Louis, Mo., in 2003, those hobbies became a little less accessible so he took to cycling — eventually, the long-distance type. Two years ago Bermúdez competed in the Race Across the West, an 860-mile bike race from Oceanside, Calif., to Durango, Colo., which helped prepare him for the 12-day Race Across America, something he calls the “next step.” “It’s a nonstop race so most people will not sleep more than three hours in every 24-hour period, at the maximum,” Bermúdez said. “In order to finish you need to finish within 12 days. That means averaging 250 miles a day. The winner will probably finish in eight and a half days, if not less, so he’s averaging more like 350 miles a day. That’s a lot of miles.” A lot of miles indeed for a man whose time is normally devoted to helping decide the future of college students. But he won’t embark on the 3,000-mile journey alone. One member of his six-person crew is Jeremiah Newton, shop manager of Aggieland Cycling, who is no stranger to Bermúdez’ long bike rides. “When [Bermúdez] moved to College Station he was already a pretty big cyclist, so I was working on his bike,” Newton said. “The first time he did [Race Across the West] he had me come along and now I’ve been through half of the races already so what’s another couple hundred miles.” His crew will not only include Newton but a

host of others dedicated to making sure Bermúdez is hydrated and full of energy. Aside from Newton as the mechanic, four drivers will stay with Bermúdez during the race along with a medic. “The support crew is incredibly important,” Bermúdez said. “When you do something like this you put your body through incredibly testing conditions and you need people to make sure that you are fed, that you are safe, that you are not dehydrated and falling asleep on your bike, and make sure you aren’t going into some sort of heat exhaustion or stroke.” It’s all a large operation for Bermúdez, who is setting his goals for finishing the race instead of winning it. “I believe that I am going to finish but there are a lot of people in this race that are essentially fulltime athletes that do nothing apart from train. And I have other obligations,” Bermúdez said with a chuckle. Apart from being the dean of a college of more than 7,200 students, Bermúdez’ “other obligations” have included authoring more than 100 publications, including five single-authored books and five edited volumes. “I’m blown away that in his position as a dean he has a ton of responsibility,” Pierce said. “I’m sure it’s not a nine-to-five job, it’s an all-the-time job. First of all, the fact that he can do this training and even think about doing this bike race across America for 12 days, then that he wants to do it to help people in need — It says a lot about his character and his goals. I think it’s extremely admirable and quite a good example for the rest of us.” For Bermúdez though, the race and the money are about being something bigger than himself. “It’s not about me,” he said. “I’d like to do my best and raise some money for a very worthwhile cause.”

Ol’ Ag returns to Aggieland to sign copies of new book Sarah Hoffscwhelle The Battalion

odd Staples, commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture and Class of 1984, returned to Aggieland on Wednesday to sign copies of his new book, “Broken Borders, Broken Promises: How Porous Borders Are Robbing America’s Future.” “[‘Broken Borders, Broken Promises’] is a good read and I’d recommend that every Aggie pick it up and give it a read,” said Kyle Kacal, state representative and Class of 1992. “The border is key to a lot of our economic issues and social issues, especially political.” His new book discusses current border security and the immigration issues that go along with it, as well as how he thinks the U.S. needs a better system to enter our

workforce legally. “I felt the best way to tell the story was to put it into book form to tell the story of Texan landowners,” Staples said. “I became involved in border security issues because landowners reached out to me.” Staples talked about his struggles with getting resources from the federal government to help with the border situation. Some people discussed the importance of having a representative with a background in agriculture because it is such a big part of Texas and its people. “He’s been doing it a long time and knows what he’s doing.” said Collin Mathews, sophomore agricultural business major. Jana McMillan, an outreach coordinator for the Brazos County Republican office, also talked about Staples’ background.

“It’s dear to our hearts since a lot of us grew up in the country and we have our personal interests in agriculture. So we like people to have an agricultural background,” McMillan said. Staples talked about why it was important for students to read his book. “There’s a great deal of misinformation coming from Washington today about what the real problems are,” Staples said. Staples was re-elected to commissioner of agriculture in 2011 but is campaigning for lieutenant governor for 2014. Staples said he is excited about the future of Texas. Proceeds from the book will be donated to help secure border law enforcement and reform immigration systems.

Sarah Hoffscwhelle — THE BATTALION

Todd Staples, commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture and Class of 1984, signs copies of his new book Wednesday at the Texas Aggieland Bookstore.

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Thousands pay respects to fallen firefighters HOUSTON (AP) — Houston Fire Chief Terry Garrison saluted an honor guard member, received from him an American flag and a return salute, then turned on his heels and knelt before grieving relatives of a firefighter killed on the job. He handed them the folded flag, offering a few quiet words of comfort and a smile. Garrison performed the task Wednesday four times — an unprecedented duty in the 118-year history of the department — as the nation’s fourth-biggest city and fellow firefighters from around North America remembered four firefighters killed while battling a massive hotel fire last week. “We lost four very, very brave members,” Garrison told thousands who gathered at Houston’s Reliant Stadium for a memorial. “They paid the ultimate price.” The four died when a structure at the Southwest Inn collapsed in a fire that grew Friday to five alarms. “To the families of our fallen firefighters, let me say I recognize your sacrifice and I thank you,” the chief said. “You gave more, much much more than whatever is expected of you. You gave part of your life. You gave your loved ones.” Killed in the fire were Capt. Matthew Renaud, 35, who had been with the department for 11 and a half years; engineer operator Robert Bebee, 41, who joined almost 12 years ago; firefighter Robert Garner, 29, who joined the department 2 and half years ago; and Anne Sullivan, 24, a probationary fire-

fighter who had graduated in April from the Houston Fire Department Academy. Houston Mayor Annise Parker, her voice halting at times, said it broke hearts of a “great and grieving city” to have to say goodbye. “We can’t make the pain go away,” she said, looking toward the victims’ relatives. “We can’t make it hurt less. We honor the lives of these four brave heroes. And we thank you for sharing them with us.” Large brass bells that generations ago marked the beginning of fire shifts sounded the last duty call for each of the firefighters as the thousands in uniform stood silently at attention. Capt. Michael Mire said the bells signaled “the end of our comrades’ duties here on earth.” Nicole Garner, Robert Garner’s sister, recalled having lunch with her brother a few weeks ago. He told her then he’d finally figured out that being a firefighter was what he needed to do with his life. “My brother died fulfilling his dream,” she said. Mary Moore Sullivan called her daughter, Anne, a “loving daughter, best friend and my hero.” “God bless my beautiful baby girl Anne and the three men who joined her,” she said tearfully. Investigators at the scene of the blaze have said they are focusing on an attic and the kitchen area of a restaurant connected to the motel. They don’t expect the findings of their investigation to be announced for months.

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