By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter Pregnant women faced with homelessness in Waco are provided meals, living arrangements and learning opportunities at the Care Net of Central Texas guesthouse. The guesthouse was originally founded to provide shelter and resources to women considering terminating their pregnancies due to homelessness. Care Net’s CEO Deborah McGregor said for many of these women, maintaining a pregnancy means being forced to live on the streets. For pregnant women with other children, McGregor said Care Net is the only place in Waco where they can live for free. When a woman is around seven months pregnant,…
Author: Melanie Pace
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day this week, a blood drive is taking place in front of Moody Memorial Library in partnership with the Multicultural Association of Pre-Health Students (MAPS). So far this week, the drive has raised less than half of the amount of blood it needs. Denver sophomore Gunilla Diza, MAPS community health committee member said less donations are common during this time of the year. “This week it’s been colder than usual,” Diza said. “With those kinds of conditions, giving blood just isn’t as appealing.” The goal is…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterBaylor students may be legal adults, but they’re not too old for Halloween costumes.Dr. Mia Moody-Ramirez, associate professor and director of graduate studies and american studies, said to remember to be culturally sensitive this Halloween.“Cultural appropriation is borrowing someone else’s culture without giving them credit, or without using it the way it was intended,” Moody-Ramirez said. “It’s theft, it’s like stealing from someone’s culture.”Dallas senior Hannah Causey, student body president, sent an email to students on Friday with the subject “My Culture is not a Costume.” In the email, she encouraged students to be “thoughtful…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter Bittersweet cookies have become of the latest foodie crazes in Waco. Houston junior Hanna Austin started the business this year, and said it has grown rapidly in just a few months. The cookies, sold at Heritage Creamery and online, sell out quickly. Austin said she bakes flavors such as s’mores, hot fudge sundae and salted caramel in Heritage’s kitchen. Austin said she bakes around 75 Bittersweet cookies each day. Bittersweet now has close to 1,500 followers on Instagram, and Austin said she believes social media has played a pivotal role in the growth of…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter Turnout for early voting this year in McLennan County has been more than four times as high as voter turnout in 2014. Already, the voting numbers have been comparable to that of a presidential election, according to McLennan County Early Voting Totals. Kathy Van Wolfe, McLennan’s elections administrator, said the high turnout began during registration earlier this month. On Monday, Wolfe said there were lines at all of the early voting sites, and voters were lining up even when the polls were closing for the day. Around six thousand votes have been sent in…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterThere is only one place for opinion in the newsroom, and that is right here, in the opinion column.In journalism classes, one of the first lessons taught is to be an unbiased reporter of the facts. Why does this so often change when we enter the real reporting world?You can probably recall several news sources and their political leanings without much difficulty. One newspaper is ardently conservative, another is known to be fervently liberal. This should not be the case. A credible media source is one that hides its beliefs in favor of presenting the…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter The Baylor Counseling Center served one in six Baylor students last year. Dr. Jim Marsh, executive director for counseling services, said many of these visits are stress-related. Marsh has been working with college students for over 20 years, and he said there are a number of simple ways to ease stress. He said his first piece of advice is to avoid making too many commitments. “It may be that students need to cut back on other activities,” Marsh said. Marsh said students sometimes have to make the decision to cut back for…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterThe American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) assembled period packs for homeless women on Thursday night using donations from their feminine products drive.Friendswood senior Sowmika Boppana, AMWA’s service chair, said the group collected enough donations to provide period packs to the homeless community for the rest of the semester.Boppana said it is “not OK that women don’t have access” to feminine products “just because of their socioeconomic status.”“Everyone just gets super uncomfortable during that type of the month anyway,” Boppana said.Each period pack includes pads, tampons, pain medication, a handmade rice heating pad and a hand-written…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter With a little over a month until the mid-term elections, there are still a few days left to register before the cut-off date next Tuesday. Dr. Rebecca Flavin, senior lecturer of political science, said voter turnout is generally lower for young people. On Baylor’s campus, the number of students who vote is below 10 percent. Flavin said not voting means “not exercising your voice.” Though the immediate effects of voting are not always apparent, the consequences can be far-reaching. Flavin cites student loans as a particular issue young people should take into account when…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterThe Beauchamp Addiction Recovery Center (BARC), located in the East Village Residential Community, has been serving Baylor students for around three years.Substance abuse is two and a half times more common on college campuses than in the general population. Around 22.9 percent of college students meet the medical definition of drug addiction, which means the number of students dealing with addiction at Baylor is potentially larger than the freshman class.The BARC treats students for mental health issues ranging from eating disorders to drug, alcohol, and pornography addiction. Stanton Corley, Baylor’s recovery support coordinator, said many…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter Mission Waco’s 26th annual Walk for the Homeless was held on Sunday morning. Along the route, walkers stopped for 15 to 20 minutes at different locations such as Compassion Ministries, the VA Regional Center and First Baptist Church. A motorcycle brigade helped navigate the walkers and keep traffic at bay. R.J. Berger, a volunteer in the motorcycle brigade, said he participated in the walk for the seventeenth time. Berger said the cause is important to him because the work he does is “real.” “It’s being the church,” Berger said. “The Bible says to be the…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterSaving the bees is all the buzz among conservationist groups.According to Greenpeace, honeybees do about 80 percent of pollinating worldwide – which means they pollinate 70 out of 100 of the main human food crops.Honeybees are an easy cause to get behind. Who doesn’t love honey? Eating? Even if you do not consume a largely plant-based diet, there has to be at least one out of those 70 crops that you would be sad to live without.A Texas ordinance passed with the help of the American Honey Bee Protection Agency, provides for the relocation of…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter San Antonio junior James Greenwood said he and his roommate woke up Tuesday morning in their house on 9th Street to find both of their cars had been broken into overnight. “They took my roommate’s checkbook, they took my wallet and they took some cash I had in my center console,” Greenwood said. Greenwood said several of his neighbors experienced similar car break-ins on the same night. Sgt. Patrick Swanton of the Waco Police Department said crimes like this are considered crimes of opportunity. “Criminals know that when Baylor is back in school the…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast Reporter Students had the chance to relax with therapy dogs from Angel Paws on Wednesday night in Teal Residence Hall as part of an event hosted by the American Medical Women’s Association. Sandy Wittliff is president of Angel Paws. Wittliff said three months in the hospital with a broken hip showed her just how hard it is to go without puppy love. “There was a while there when I was in isolation, so I couldn’t have any dog friends come in,” Wittliff said. “I really can relate to when you guys are all sad…
By Melanie Pace | Broadcast ReporterDr. Jeff Doyle, dean of Student Learning and Engagement, started Explore Waco as an initiative to get Baylor students active in the Waco community.“In the last ten years the city of Waco has grown in leaps and bounds by what there is to offer,” Doyle said.As a part of this initiative, students are encouraged to make the most out of their Baylor experience by visiting a number of sites listed on a bucket list on the Baylor website.“We know that going to Baylor is more than just what is on campus,” Doyle said. “The city…