Fieldhouse overcrowding may pose threat to students

Limited space and resources in Utah State University’s main athletic building, the George Nelson Fieldhouse, have created an environment that is crowded and prone to user injury, some students have said. 

According to Mike Ginnetti, supervisor and coordinator of the fieldhouse, this time of year is the “peak indoor recreation season” as students search out a place to remain active and escape the cold weather.

Students and various athletic programs at the university use the fieldhouse. Due to the high demand for use and insufficient resources, specific times are scheduled in which students may do different activities. It is during these allotted times that some parts of the fieldhouse often become crowded.

Joseph Burt, a student who frequently participates in the fieldhouse’s open-recreation soccer games, finds it difficult to use the building’s facilities because of the way they are currently managed.

“It is always really crowded on the lower courts,” Burt said. “There aren’t really a lot of options for us to play soccer. The fieldhouse is used for different activities throughout the day so everyone that wants to play has to come all at the same time.”

“There are usually way too many players, all with varying levels of ability,” Burt said. “There is always a ton of contact with that many people.”

Abul Giasuddin, a student studying bioengineering, was injured during a soccer game on Feb. 19 when another player missed the ball, kicking Giasuddin’s foot and leaving a toe sprained.

“The problem is that we have like 40 guys every day, playing in a very small space,” Giasuddin said. “It is very crowded which makes it hard to play.”

To avoid injuries, university employees in the fieldhouse are responsible for ensuring that those using the facilities follow all rules and that a safe capacity within different areas of the building is not exceeded.

“We take a lot of measures to be sure everyone who uses the fieldhouse is kept safe,” Ginnetti said. “We do hourly court checks to be sure games don’t get bigger than eight-on-eight and we intervene if games get too big.”

According to students like Burt and Giasuddin, regulation of the activities in the fieldhouse is not always effective.

“As long as we play within the allotted time,” Burt said, “they pretty much leave it up to us. Games will go on with too many players until they come over and tell us our time is up.”

Ginnetti hopes the new Aggie Recreation Center, scheduled for completion in the fall of 2015, will provide students with a less crowded alternative to the fieldhouse for recreational use.

“The new recreation center will be centered around students,” Ginnetti said. “Most of the athletic programs will continue using the Fieldhouse and will leave the recreation center open for easier drop-in use by students. Looser scheduling will make it so students can use facilities at different times, which should reduce crowds in both buildings.”

Clayton Leuba, Tessa Italasano, Ileana Borunda and Cale Patterson contributed to this article.

To find solutions inside the body, USU students look under the sea

Inspired by aquatic creatures like sharks, whales and shellfish, and tested on the hulls of ships, microtexture has become an important addition to the medical field. 

Soon, with the help of Utah State University research, it could soon be implanted into thousands of medical patients.

Bio-engineering seniors Sydney Bone, Tyson Holverson and Eric Schmidt have undertaken an 11-month microtexture project which could revolutionize medical implants like hip replacements, pacemakers and catheters.

As a concept, Schmidt said, microtexture is pretty simple.

“We’re adding a tiny texture onto things that stops bacteria from growing on them,” he said.

Bone, Holverson and Schmidt are trying to improve on designs developed in 2007 by biotechnology company Sharklet Technologies, Inc.

“They noticed that when a whale comes into port, it’s covered with algae on its skin. They looked at shark skin and noticed that algae doesn’t grow on it,” Schmidt said. By replicating the rough texture of shark skin, Sharklet produced a bacteria-repellent plastic texture, now gaining popularity in the medical industry.

While Sharklet focuses mainly on plastic products, however, Bone, Holverson and Schmidt look to use microtexture in a new way.

“We’re not copying the sharkskin, per se, there’s already a company that has a patent on that,” Bone said. “We’re looking at different kinds of textures that can be put on metal.”

The students intend to establish a niche in a growing microtexture market by designing a metal-compatible texture based on the skins of certain shellfish, Bone said.

“We’re trying to stop infections, so we’re putting small little ridges, these patterns, onto a hip implant,” Schmidt said. “But hip implants aren’t the only medical implant that could potentially benefit from microtexture. We’ve looked into things like pacemakers and catheters.”

Discovering how sharks and shellfish prevent bacterial infection was the easy part, Bone said.
“The hard part is to get the pattern onto a surface,” Bone said. “I was surprised that this was the difficult part, that even though we’re bio-engineering students doing the research, the hard part is mechanical.”

By partnering with local medical company Zigg Design the seniors have found a working balance between the bio-engineering and mechanical engineering needs of the project. 

“The company we’re working with is going to give us scraps of the material they use for machine implants,” Holverson said. “Nothing too fancy, we just need some results to get us started.”

The project is expected to finish in December, although the team would like to be done earlier.

“There are other people and other literature doing similar things; it’s just a matter of who gets there first and whose idea is the most innovative,” Bone said. “I hope we do. That would be awesome for us and for USU.”

Research by students at Utah State has the potential to provide the university with grants, and the opportunity for the students' work to be published.

“We’ve been talking to the patent office at USU and we’ve been finding intellectual property deals between us, the university and the company,” Schmidt said. “We were told that if this actually goes to market, we get a slice of the pie.”

Although they have plenty of incentive, the students know that there is a lot to do in order to achieve their goals.

“The hardest part is trying to know everything,” Holverson said. “There are a lot of little details and little processes we have to understand in order to understand how everything works together.”

But in spite of complicated details, Holverson said he is pleased with the way the group works together as a team. 

“We work well together, so that’s part of the reason we’ve stuck together,” Holverson said. “We know how each other work. We know each others’ strengths and weaknesses and we kind of help strengthen the others where they’re not so strong. We’ve got ourselves into a good groove.”

Once the project concludes, Bone, Holverson and Schmidt will go their separate ways, but they hope their research will benefit others.

“The idea started with ship hulls, they get a lot of barnacles that grow on them, but by applying this texture, it doesn’t grow,” Bone said. “The next step is finding more places to add this to and to improve the quality of peoples’ lives.”

Mary Taggart, Sam Bennion, Landon Kohler, Hannah Heninger and Amanda Ahlman contributed to this article.

Catholics: Lent is about more than simple sacrifices

Year after year, Sister Marilyn Mark has watched fellow Catholics give up television, chocolate and Internet surfing for Lent.

But this year the nun from the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Parish in Logan is hoping to see a greater good come from an observance intended for prayerful preparation for Easter.

 “Lent is about replacing bad things with good things,” Mark said. “If you give up watching TV, what do you do with your time instead?”

Lent, she said, isn’t about simple sacrifice, but rather “change for the better.”

“It’s a time to get rid of old habits and a time to add something good into your life,” she said.

That’s what Utah State University student Oakman Kennedy is trying to do during this Lent, which began last week with Ash Wednesday and it will last through Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.

Kennedy said he chose to improve his dental hygiene for Lent.

“Lent is about making yourself a better person through simple ways,” Kennedy said.

And those simple ways, he said, can serve as complex reminders of the difference between physical and spiritual things. “It’s a time where you realize that the more stuff you own, the more stuff owns you.”

Along with helping improve members of the Catholic faith, Mark said Lent is also a period of great significance for those wishing to join the church.

“Lent is a preparation time for those interested in joining the church,” Mark said. “It is a reflective time and a time where those wishing to join will observe many of the Catholic Rites.”

Converts to the church will be baptized at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.

Kyle Heywood, Mackenzie Rogers, Madison Takos and Katie Feinauer contributed to this article.

Transit district rewards citizens for reducing air pollution

An annual program to reward mass transit riders with prizes will likely see increased participation this year, despite the fact that many commuters are abstaining from the contest.

Last year’s Cache in for Clean Air program, sponsored by the Cache Chamber of Commerce, Utah State University’s Aggie Shuttle and the Cache Valley Transit District, drew 1,400 entries. Aggie Shuttle supervisor Alden Erickson said participation in the two-year-old program, which is designed to help combat some of the worst air in the nation, looks to be even greater this time around. He attributed the rise in participation to increased ridership on both bus systems.

Those riding CVTD and the Aggie Shuttle can collect raffle tickets each day they ride the bus. After filling out a brief survey on the back of the ticket, riders can enter raffles at any of the 26 participating businesses including Walmart, The Diamond Gallery, the USU Campus Store and Pizza Pie Café.

Erickson said it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

“The businesses are always very willing and happy to donate because it’s basically free advertising,” Erickson said. “We receive feedback about riding habits from the surveys, participants get prizes, and we hope that it reduces emissions in the air and continues to promote residents to take advantage of our transportation.”

CVTD bus driver Benjamin Speer has noticed a change.

 “I think more people know about it this year,” Speer said. “I put in a new stack of tickets yesterday and it was almost gone two hours later.”

Not every rider feels the need to enter the drawing, though.

“I like to allow others the chance to win because I already feel like I’m beyond blessed right now,” said Elder Randal Starks, a service missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who rides the bus to travel across the valley and meet new people.

Utah State University student Victoria Holman said that while it might be nice to win some of the prizes, she hasn't put in any tickets because she has "bad luck" and has never won a raffle.

The contest will run until the end of the month, giving riders just over a week to submit the last of their tickets. Winners of the drawings will be notified by phone or email during the first week of March and will have 30 days to collect their prizes.

Cameron Etherington, Rebecca Walker, Connor Comeau, Lilibeth Salvador and McCall Bulloch contributed to this article.

Aggies will take ice cream to Capitol Hill

On March 21, representatives from the Associated Students of Utah State University and other university officials will travel to Capitol Hill in Salt Lake City for the annual Aggie Ice Cream Day. The visit will include mingling with members of the Utah Legislature and sharing on the USU’s most famous delicacies.

James Morales, the ASUSU vice president for student services, will be heading the event.

“The reason we do this is to have a relationship-building opportunity with the Legislature,” Morales said. “They are dealing with significant items for us this year.”

Among the issues being considered by the Legislature, which entered into general session on Jan. 28 and will conclude on March 14, are proposals for a new Aggie Life and Wellness Center, a new biology building and in-state tuition offers for the children and grandchildren of Utah State alumni, regardless of their state of residence.

Government Relations Council President Daryn Frischknecht said his council is frequently involved with the Legislature and feels that the Aggie Ice Cream Day is a good time to talk, in a relaxed setting, about what Utah State is doing.

“Our view for this Legislature session hasn’t been, 'oh give us money, we need it,'” Frischknecht said. “It’s more to show how awesome Utah State has done in the past with the money they have given us. We appreciate the money they are giving us and this is our way of showing it.”

ASUSU President Christian Thrapp is also looking forward to the visit.

“We kind of give them a face to put with the students,” he said.

Morales said the members of the Legislature look forward to the day Utah State comes to town bearing ice cream. He recalled that, in the past, some representatives have been disappointed when the treats have run out.

“Everyone loves Aggie Ice Cream,” Morales said. “Wherever I go across the state and mention Aggie Ice Cream, people’s eyes light up.”

Zach Waxler, Bradley Thatcher, Jordan Groff and Caesarea Kritz contributed to this article.

Aggie Blue Bikes hopes to lock down on bike theft

Aggie Blue Bikes is taking measures to prevent bicycle theft on campus.

“In the past three to four months we’ve had more bikes stolen than the entire time this program has been in existence since 2005,” said Stephanie Tomlin, program coordinator for Aggie Blue Bikes, a service at Utah State University that allows students to borrow refurbished bicycles free of charge for three months at a time.

In response to the increase in thefts, Tomlin said, Aggie Blue Bikes added policies last month to ensure that bicycle safety isn’t being neglected. Aggie Blue Bikes now highly recommends that borrowers use a U-lock and requires that any traditional chain lock used be at least 10mm thick. Aggie Blue Bikes has also increased the replacement cost for lost or stolen bicycles from $150 to $250.

“One of the biggest issues is that people don’t know how to properly lock their bike,” Tomlin said. “You need to go through your frame, your wheel and then the bike rack. It’s really easy to pick a chain lock or cut them with something as simple as basic cable cutters.”

Tomlin said bicycles left unlocked or unattended for weeks or months at a time are easy targets for journalists. 

According to the Utah State University Police Department, there were 63 incidences of bicycle theft in 2011 compared to 29 in 2010. Data from 2012 was not immediately available.  

USU police officer Sutton Hanzalik said bicycle theft has increased partially because it has become easier for thieves to sell them online.

“It’s becoming harder for pawn shops to want to buy bicycles because of our ability to track serial numbers and models through computer systems,” Hanzalik said. “But a thief can easily go on Craigslist or ksl.com and sell a bike to someone. People online often just see a cheap bike as a good deal and won’t question it or report it to police.”

Hanzalik said the USU Police Department does training each semester during student orientation to help students avoid theft and burglary. The department also allow students to register their bicycles for easier retrieval in the event they are lost or stolen.

“Because crime rates in Logan are so low, people often take predators for granted,” Hanzalik said. “We as a police force can’t be everywhere so we heavily rely on citizens to report a lot of crimes. If they see something that just doesn’t look right, we need them to call us.”

Hanzalik said about 40 to 50 percent of bicycles that students report as stolen end up being found on campus.

“Someone is lazy and they see a bike without a lock so they ride it to class and drop it off at another bike rack,” Hanzalik said. “This is filed as wrongful appropriation.”

Tomlin thinks that a worry-free attitude toward locking bicycles is creating a negative trend.

“The attitude here seems to be, ‘Oh, it’s Logan, my bike’s safe,’” Tomlin said. “Unfortunately, I think some people in Logan and Utah State in particular are realizing that there are a lot of bikes and people aren’t really locking them up, which makes them really easy to steal.”

Tomlin hopes to secure grants in the future that will allow Aggie Blue Bikes to purchase U-locks for students and sponsor courses on bicycle theft prevention.

“I just present it to people as, ‘How much is your bike worth to you?’” Tomlin said. “I know we’re college students and it can be hard to pay $30 for a lock, but if it saves you money down the road it’s worth that initial investment.”

Seth Merrill, Grady Smith, Teresa Gutierrez and Jessica Hinrichs contributed to this article.