The Prospector (El Paso, Tex.), Vol. 107, No. 11, Ed. 1 Tuesday, February 15, 2022 Page: 2 of 12
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PAGE 2 - FEBRUARY 15, 2022- THE PROSPECTOR
The need for activism without tragedy
e-
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eSsSs223
Kristen Scheaffer
SPEAK YOUR MIND!
The Prospector & Minero Magazine
support The Battalion newspaper
Kristen Scheaffer, Staff Reporter
Daniel A. Lopez, Staff Reporter
Katrina Villareal, Staff Reporter
VIDEOGRAPHER
Monica Chavarria
The Prospector is published by the Student Media and Publications Board, 105 Union East, 500 W. University
Ave. El Paso, Texas, 79968. The Prospector appears in print once per week on Tuesdays duringthe fall and spring
semesters. The newspaper is not printed during holidays and when classes are not in session. The Prospector
does provide news online atwww.theprospectordaily.com.
The Prospector is provided to students through student fees. First copy is free. Any additional copies, if available,
must be purchased for $1 through the Department of Student Media and Publications. The Prospector is not re-
sponsible for claims made by advertisers. Additional policy information may be obtained by calling the Prospector
at 915-747-5161. Opinions expressed in The Prospector are not necessary those of the university.
Personal information (phone numbers and address) will be used for identification only.
Letters are subject to editing to fit available space, clarity and brevity.
CONTRIBUTORS
Alyson Rodriguez
Andres Castellano
Eduardo Flores
Elisha Nunez
Julia Lucero
Maria Salette Ontiveros
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Connor Martinez
Carolina Uri barri
ADMINISTRATION
Veronica Gonzalez, Director
Tracy Roy, Assistant Director
Amy Ontiveros,
Administrative Assistant
Isabel Castillo,
Accounting Specialist
Vacant,
Account Executive
Vacant,
Adve rti s i n g Coo rd i n ato r
...and submit a letter for publication. Please include your full name, street address, tele-
phone number and e-mail address, as well as your student major, classification and/or
titile if applicable. Write us to 105 E. Union, prospector@utep.edu, call us to 747-516, or
send a fax to 747-8031.
EDITORS & STAFF
Alberto Silva Fernandez,
Editor in Chief
Hugo Hinojosa, Designer
Victoria Rivas,
Arts & Culture Editor
Maria Luisa Guerrero,
Web Editor/Copy Editor
Annabella Mireles,
Photo Editor
Anahy Diaz,
Multimedia Editor
Emily Autumn Velasquez,
Sports Editor
Itzel Giron,
Audience & Engagement Editor
practiced to begin, with?)
Critical race theory is the idea that
racism has become ingrained in
legal systems and policies and race
is essentially a social construct, ac-
cording to edweek.org. CRT is not
teaching prejudice towards white
people, nor is it encouraging any su-
rights. The university, along with
attempting to cease printing, are
trying to force the paper to move
to the university’s Department of
Journalism where the university
would have full control of what gets
published. If The Battalion choses
to stay as a student organization
they would lose their office space,
its faculty advisor, and general
manager.
Prior to this decision, The Bat-
talion had run as an independent
student organization reporting on
student-issues at Texas A&M.
Under Texas A&M’s 2021 system
policy, official messaging regula-
tion, 09-02. ,any form ofpublica-
tion would have to be approved by
the university.
All funding for The Battalion’s
printing and payroll is made
through selling advertisements and
no funding is received from the
university.
5 PROSPECTOR
The Battalion, the student-led
newspaper at Texas A&M released
an article on Feb.11 detailing that
their university President Kath-
erine Banks, Ph.D., is forcing the
129-year-old publication to stop
printing. The decision was made
without consulting any journal-
ism professors on campus and was
purely “a decision made by univer-
sity leadership,” said Banks in an
interview with The Battalion.
Regardless, The Battalion has said
it will continue printing.
The Prospector & Minero
Magazine support The Battalion
in their decision to diligently con-
tinue printing news-stories despite
university leadership demanding
the publication to go completely
online.
We see Texas A&M’s new policy
of forcing The Battalion to stop
printing as an overreach and a
violation of their First Amendment
formats is a privilege.
Texas A&M’s president did not
speak to any journalism profession-
als before making her decision and
the President has no prior experi-
ence in journalism.
“I’m not a professor of journal-
ism. I don’t understand exactly why
[print media] is important to the
field,” she said in an interview with
The Battalion.
The ability to take a physical
newspaper or magazine home
where students might not have
access to the internet or home to
parents or guardians who might
not know how the internet works is
an important one to keep in mind.
When considering how to keep
the public informed and how
democracy is sustained in both the
local and international level, acces-
sibility is of the utmost importance.
Our unique student body lives
and learns in a city where national
cording to The Texas Tribune. Does
this bill contradict the teachings of
the 1619 Project ? The year, 1836
was chosen because of Texas’ vic-
tory over Mexico, with that victory
came independence, but not for
everyone. However, this was one of
many bills, including the SB8 bill
banning abortion after six weeks,
signed Sept. 1,2021, leaving this
bill to be buried.
“Was there a dark side to Texas
history? And the answer, well of
course (there is), your common
sense would tell you. There had to
be, so was there corruption among
the leaders of Texas? Yeah. But
there was also a very good side and
people need to be able to weigh
those things, use their own judge-
ment, right to do so,” said Richard
Gutierrez Ph.D., professor of politi-
cal science at UTEP. “But when
you get such a slanted biased story,
you grew up thinking that all these
others didn’t contribute anything
At the University of Texas at
El Paso, students have reported,
designed and printed The Prospec-
tor either weekly or bi-weekly since
1915 and Minero Magazine each
semester since 2004, began print-
ing Minero magazine, a bilingual
publication, each semester.
Based in a bi-national community,
UTEP’s student journalists are
faced with readers — college stu-
dents or not — who consume media
in a wide variety of ways. UTEP’s
international student population
sometimes means that they must
cross the U.S.-Mexico border,
sometimes waiting up to four hours
everyday not only to attend classes,
but sometimes just to access a
computer.
This means that no, not everyone
is online and not everyone can af-
ford to be online.
The ability to do journalism, to
read journalism in a wide variety of
periority of one race over another.
CRT teaches that these things still
exist, and we must be aware of them
to make change. You can’t solve a
problem if you aren’t aware there is
a problem.
We need to ask ourselves why
we are not having these discus-
sions. Why are we not fighting for
the education of the future ? Is it
because there is no George Floyd
or Breonna Taylor to go with this
fight ? Is it a lack of media cover-
age, or is it a lack of interest for the
media to cover it? For that matter,
why are we (myself included) only
discussing these matters during
specific periods, for example, when
it is Black History Month? These
issues do not disappear at sunset on
Feb. 28.
On Sept.1, Gov. Greg Abbott of
Texas signed a bill into law, known
as the 1836 Project. This bill was
instated to ensure students are
getting a “patriotic education,” ac-
KRISTEN SCHEAFFER
The Prospector
On Jan. 11 one of my podcasts
dropped a new episode. I grabbed
my shopping list for Target and
headed out, starting the new
episode to listen to on my way.
This episode stuck with me. It was
NPR’s “Code Switch,” and the
episode was, “They came, they saw,
they reckoned?” and it discussed
the racial reckoning of Summer
2020.
Why does it take tragedy to bring
attention to the injustices happen-
ing in the United States? Recently,
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator
of the 1619 Project, opened her
first Freedom School for the proj-
ect, and we hardly heard anything
in the news about this. Yet, there
was plenty of national news on
newly appointed Gov. Glen Young-
kin of Virginia keeping critical race
theory out of the Commonwealth
school system. (Was CRT actually
and that they were all inferior.”
Do we get to select our history?
If we are to be patriotic, does this
mean the school system will skim
over the darker side of Texas his-
tory? Does denying the education
of slavery “prevent” a racially divi-
sive future ? If that were the case,
why are there people like Philando
Castile and Trayvon Martin since
Critical Race Theory hasn’t been in
our schools?
We, especially white people, need
to be better and need to do better.
Yes, we may be allies, but at the end
of the day, we still go home to our
privileged homes with our privi-
leged families. Doing better starts
in the classroom and educating oth-
ers. Instead of disputing something
we heard a snippet about on the
radio, let’s do our research and be
better allies for a better future._____
Kristen Scheaffer is a staff reporter and can be
reached at kmscheaffer@miners.utep.edu.
Opinion ......
and international policies become
daily life. They want to know about
what’s going on in their city and the
city across the border.
Because of this, our publication
team knows first-hand that it is es-
sential to maintain increased acces-
sibility to new-sources, regardless of
where the publication is based.
Although both publications have
adopted online formats to bet-
ter connect with the increasingly
online generation of students each
year, the choice not to abandon
printing, despite the increasing
prices of print, is a willing one.
We will stand by The Battalion’s
students and we hope they choose
to continue to print and remain
an organization in the name of
student-press freedom.
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University of Texas at El Paso. The Prospector (El Paso, Tex.), Vol. 107, No. 11, Ed. 1 Tuesday, February 15, 2022, newspaper, February 15, 2022; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1582592/m1/2/: accessed June 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Texas at El Paso.