Texas Wesleyan’s Black Student Association held “Officer, May I?” in Martin Hall on Tuesday.

The event was attended by about 70 guests, including Texas Wesleyan University President Frederick Slabach.

“Officer, May I?” was meant to educate people on how to interact with police in a way that is safe for everyone, BSA Vice President Trezjon Cothran said.

“Tonight’s event was very significant for our campus and community,” Cothran said. “It was informative, educational and tremendously needed.”

This event was important because it’s BSA’s first step to help lessen tension between police and the public, Cothran said.

The event featured a panel including Wesleyan Board of Trustees member Glenn Lewis, Fort Worth police Sergeant Billie Price and Dr. Wafeeq Sabir, a retired police officer. There was also a question and answer section.

“Although we cannot change the world, we look forward to changing the community with the hope of receiving the proper recognition to make that impact expand,” Cothran said.

If a person is in a situation where he or she is interacting with a police officer that they don’t feel is being handled appropriately, they should first attempt to speak to the sergeant that supervises that officer, Price said.

“If you can’t get anywhere by speaking with the officer’s sergeant then once you’ve been arrested and get out, make a formal complaint to the internal affairs department,” Price said.

Lewis said the event indicates that police interaction with the public is a problem. In a free country like America no one should need to be told how to act.

“You have to have special training to be a police officer,” Lewis said, “but you don’t have to have special training to be a citizen in a free society and a lot of these things you’ve been hearing about today are just common courtesy.”

Lewis thinks that if a person would not fight his peers then the person should not fight law enforcement, either.

“We have to work on our relationships,” Lewis said. “ Nobody should be afraid of police officers and police officers shouldn’t be afraid of you.”

Some officers are afraid of civilians because they perceive something about them without knowing that person, Lewis said.

“Most of it just amounts to treating each other with respect and common courtesy,” he said.

Price suggested sitting down and discussing in groups what the problem could be between police and civilians.

“[It’s important to find] out what their rights are as a citizen and then find out what the police can and can’t do,” Price said.

Sabir suggested that dinner might be the best way to start a conversation.

“If you want to have a discussion with someone, the best way to get them to open up is to have food,” said Sabir, who gave a 30-minute presentation about how to interact with police officers.

Sabir reminded the crowd that just because someone acted a certain way in a Youtube video and something bad happened to them doesn’t mean his tips aren’t useful.

“These are still some general rules,” Sabir said. “You need to understand that we live in a very complicated and often times uncomfortable society, but these are things that generally will get you home at night and get you back to your loved ones.”

With the new football team revving up on campus, students and faculty are wondering about the status of women’s lacrosse.

Women’s lacrosse will begin practicing in the fall of 2017, Athletic Director Steve Trachier said.

“We’ll do a candidate search this fall and hire a head coach around January to start the recruitment process for the team for 2017-2018,” Trachier said.

The team is expected to start playing in the spring of 2018, Trachier said.

The women’s lacrosse team will practice and play at Martin Field where the men’s and women’s soccer teams also practice and play, but there shouldn’t be any conflict, Trachier said.

“Their seasons don’t overlap,” Trachier said. “Soccer is a fall sport, and lacrosse is a spring sport.”

When the team starts practicing in fall 2017, they can condition and weight lift until their season starts, Trachier said. It is still too early to tell when their season will officially begin.

University President Frederick Slabach is excited about the growth the addition of the sport will bring to Wesleyan as well.

“We’re excited about the student-athletes it will attract to Texas Wesleyan,” Slabach wrote in an email.

The university has continued expanding its women’s athletic program throughout the years, Slabach wrote.

“Lacrosse is our next step in creating more opportunities for female athletes at Texas Wesleyan,” Slabach wrote.

Women’s lacrosse had been added to Texas Wesleyan’s roster of sports after the return of the football program in order to keep the university in compliance with Title IX, Trachier said.

According to ww2.ed.gov, Title IX states that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Women’s lacrosse is a large team sport similar in size to a soccer team so offering it as a varsity sport will help meet Title IX requirements, Trachier said.

“Any time that you show that you’re trying to create more opportunity in sport for women it does help out,” Trachier said. “We think we’ll get around 25 [players], so that’s our target.”

Men’s and women’s lacrosse are common on the East Coast and around the Great Lakes, but are growing in popularity, Trachier said.

“It’s the fastest growing women’s sport in America,” Trachier said.

The NAIA is offering women’s lacrosse as an invitational sport, meaning all NAIA teams fielding the sport have the option to play each other, as opposed to just playing teams in their conference.

“There’s really not many opportunities in Texas or even in some of the surrounding states,” Trachier said. “We wanted to get out in front of it because since it is growing in popularity, we wanted to have that sport here in Texas.”

There are very few opportunities for lacrosse players in Texas; some schools offer clubs, but not scholarships. Since the teams are not all located in one general area, the team will have to travel a lot to play, Trachier said.

“Some of the NAIA schools that are participating are pretty far out,” Trachier said, “but we believe that it’s going to continue to grow in our direction.”

Lacrosse requires a lot of practice and commitment to create a good team, freshman Notre Dame lacrosse player Jacob Kanak wrote in an email.

“Our team practices five days a week in season for about two hours a day,” Kanak wrote. “We also have film sessions, positional work and team lifts. In the off season, we practice three days a week, and lift and condition three days a week.”

The player decides how much time is truly dedicated to lacrosse, though, since most athletes use their own time to work on stick skills and endurance, which is an important factor in the sport, Kanak wrote.

“Equipment on the guys’ side includes sticks, gloves, shoulder pads, elbow pads and a helmet,” Kanak wrote. “On the girls’ side it is very simple, a stick and a pair of eye goggles.”

The men’s team requires more equipment than women’s lacrosse because women’s is not a contact sport, Kanak wrote.

Kanak thinks it’s awesome that Wesleyan is adding women’s lacrosse to its athletic program.

“It’s always great to see the sport expand,” he wrote.

The Black Student Association invites Texas Wesleyan and the Polytechnic community to join them next Tuesday at a community outreach event at Martin Hall.

The event, “Officer, May I?,” will focus on overcoming division between the police and people of the community. It is free and will run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. A reception will follow at Lou’s Place.

“The event is geared toward how to become friends again with the police,” BSA Vice President Trezjon Cothran said.

BSA hopes to help cultivate a better relationship between the public and the police, said Dr. Eddy Lynton, the BSA’s sponsor and assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice.

“It’s about the connection between individuals and the people that are supposed to be there to serve and protect them,” Lynton said.

BSA has arranged for a former Fort Worth Police Department officer, current FWPD officer, and a Wesleyan trustee to come and speak to the Wesleyan community, BSA President Josh Rivers said.

“We’re getting three different perspectives: ‘What is being taught to the community?’ from a professor, ‘What should be done?’ from the officer, and ‘What rights do the people actually have?’ from the trustee,” Rivers said.

Dr. Wafeeq Sabir, who has 25 years of experience with the Fort Worth Police Department, will be sharing some of his personal experiences.

“What we’re hoping for is that he’ll provide students, faculty and staff with techniques, tips and tricks that they can use to deescalate situations,” Lynton said.

Lynton believes that Sabir’s presentation will help people relieve some of the tension that occurs in interactions with the police.

“This is a positive event. It’s not a ‘Let’s beat up the police!’ type of event,” Lynton said. “That’s not the intent at all. It’s about how do we fix where we’re at right now? How do we go from where we’re at to a better tomorrow?”

Also participating in the event are Glenn Lewis, a Texas Wesleyan grad and attorney who is on the university’s board of trustees; and FWPD Sgt. Billie Price, who is also a Wesleyan graduate.

BSA hopes to impact as many people as possible with this event, Rivers said.

“Our target audience is basically anyone that can be affected, from Wesleyan students to high school and middle school students and their parents,” Rivers said. “These are the people having to answer the questions of ‘What do I do? How do I come home? How do I feel safe?’ We want to help prepare them for that line of questioning.”

Rivers expects that this event will be set up like a town hall meeting.

“It’ll start off with a 30-minute presentation, which will include our basic rights and scenarios of what to do and what not to do when interacting with the police,” Cothran said.

After the presentation, Cothran said, the event will allow time for a question and answer discussion.

“That’s a time for everyone to just ask questions and receive knowledge respectfully,” Cothran said.

Rivers feels the people need a chance to ask questions in order to better understand the way the police serve them.

“There’s a lot of questions that we want to answer,” Rivers said. “We probably won’t answer them all.”

BSA hopes that everyone will try to attend their community outreach event because it affects a large group of people, Lynton said.

“The situations that are occurring are incredibly tragic,” Lynton said. “Often times, it seems to escalate based on a myriad of events.”

BSA understands that fear on both sides is what often leads to misunderstanding, but this event is supposed to help conquer some of that, Rivers said.

“I’m pretty sure we aren’t going to save the world in one day,” Rivers said, “but this can be an effective stepping stone to make a community.”

Texas Wesleyan football players are eager to begin building the program up and taking advantage of their redshirt season this year.

Wesleyan has attracted more than 100 athletes to the new football program, in spite of the team not playing until the fall of 2017.

“It’s going to be tough at first because we’re all football players,” said linebacker Elijah Meyer, a freshman exercise science major. “We definitely want to be out on the field.”

Many players said they chose Wesleyan because they liked that the coaches were helpful and interested in them as people not just as football players.

“He actually really cares about his players,” said running back Brandon Greene sophomore athletic training major of head coach Joe Prud’homme. “I mean each and every one of us. He has a spot for us.”

The coaches’ excitement and dedication to the team is obvious, Meyer said.

“You could tell just by the way they were acting and talking about it that they were ready to get the show on the road,” Meyer said.

A redshirt year has its advantages and disadvantages just like everything else, Meyer said.

“It’s going to be a good chance for us to get well acquainted and definitely get bigger, faster and stronger off the field first,” Meyer said, “so that when springtime comes we can hit it hard.”

A long year of practices but no games can be used to create a program that will benefit Wesleyan, said quarterback Erik Richards.

“I think a redshirt year is great because it gives everybody a year to develop and get a chance to meet the team and get well acquainted,” said Richards, a sophomore business management major.

Older programs allow the players to grow as a team before they are expected to play in games together, Richards said.

“A redshirt season gives us a chance to build as a program together before we actually get into a season,” Richards said.

Several players said that creating an image they can be proud of is important since Wesleyan has not had football in 75 years.

“We are able to start over, start from the ground up and start a good tradition,” said linebacker Otis McMillan.

It is obvious that the coaches care about more than just their football abilities; they also care about the character of their athletes, said McMillan, a freshman exercise major.

“Coach Prud’homme is just trying to keep us out of trouble and mold us into great men,” McMillan said.

The players said classes are going well and they are all excited to be working in a great environment on and off the field.

“They have a great education department in my field,” Meyer said. “I’m excited to get something started.”

Wesleyan’s coaching staff really makes a difference in the overall experience that the players have at school, Green said.

“Coach Prud’homme tries to help us out as much as he can,” Greene said. “Financially he does everything he can to get scholarships to make [paying for] school easier.”

It is important to the team that they can give back to the community around Wesleyan; they hope that bringing the football team back will help do that, Greene said.

“We’re really hoping that bringing the team here can help build the community around this part of Fort Worth,” Greene said.

Wesleyan’s football team practices 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and Friday.

Texas Wesleyan’s football team held its first practice Tuesday on the campus mall.

The team endured an almost three-hour practice, but head coach Joe Prud’homme felt it was a good “kickoff” point for the team.

“It’s a starting point,” Prud’homme said in an interview during practice. “It’s a little warm, it’s the first time they’ve done it, and it’s the first time they’ve ever been out here together.”

The 116-player team ran through warmups quickly, then began a series of rotating workout and conditioning stations to gain strength and stamina. Thirty to 40 people watched, including university President Frederick Slabach.

“They got after it,” Prud’homme said, “their attitude was good, and their enthusiasm was up.”

Strength training and conditioning are the team’s main focuses for the fall, so that by the time they need to scrimmage in the spring, the groundwork is already there, Prud’homme said.

“Our conditioning level has got to go way up,” Prud’homme said, “but it’s only the first day. I kind of expected this.”

Many players were taken aback by the heat, said fullback Zack Lanham, a criminal justice major.

“I think a lot of players were in for a big surprise,” Lanham said. “It’s hot outside, the coaches worked us, and we have a lot of work to get to done.”

But the players and coaches were excited to begin working out together, and even welcomed spectators to watch, like Jeremy Johnson, a sophomore at Cedar Valley College.

“I decided to come up and take a look,” Johnson said. “I’m very excited. I can’t wait to actually get in pads and make something happen.”

Johnson came to watch the practice to see if Wesleyan is worth transferring to.

“The main reason is to be able to go down in history at Texas Wesleyan,” Johnson said.

Prud’homme said he expected the players to be polite and respectful to all of the spectators in order to create a positive image for Wesleyan football.

“You’ve just got to set a high bar, and they’ve got to be the ones to meet it – and they want to meet it,” Prud’homme said.

The spectator turnout was great and everyone was excited for the practice, Prud’homme said.

“Thanks to everybody that came out,” Prud’homme said, “and everybody that showed a lot of support for us.”

A football team that lifts up Wesleyan is a high priority for the program, Prud’homme said.

“We know that it’s our job to do a good job of representing the school,” Prud’homme said. “We just want to have something everybody is proud of.”

According to a schedule provided by Prud’homme, the team will be practicing every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday on the mall for the remainder of the semester.

The team will begin its 2017 season on the road in Kansas on Sept. 2; the first home game will be 2 p.m. on Sept. 9, when Wesleyan plays Millsaps College, according to a scheduled released Friday. The full schedule is available at txwes.edu.