RESOLVED
For some reason tickets that are being submitted or even created are coming in 5 hours in the 'past'. IOW, if I create one right now at 9:32AM CDT, it saves it as 4:32AM CDT. When I go into the database and SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%zone%'; it gives me system_time_zone as CDT and time_zone as SYSTEM, and osticket's admin control information shows that php.ini is America/Chicago, and the database says 'CDT (Interpreted as UTC)'. I think it's the last part that is bad, but I can't seem to figure out what gives. This only started once I overwrote the files with the new 1.12.3.