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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Christensen of Jayhawkers said excluding the burritos, the Jayhawkers' expenditures totaled $991.
Christensen argued the expenditure should not be counted on the financial statements because Jayhawkers were reimbursed for the burritos by 50 individuals, who signed documents stating such.
Christensen said one burrito, an expense of $7, was not reimbursed.
The Commission heard Christensen's response but decided Jayhawkers expenditures totaled more than $1,000.
"I think the fact the Elections Commission found the Jayhawkers were in violation of exceeding their spending cap just cements that the Jayhawkers did in fact commit an egregious violation." Admussen said.
Morgan Said, the newly elected student body president, said she is excited the results have been verified so she can begin to function with her executive staff as the next Student Senate.
"I have spoken to numerous individuals in all three coalitions and we are excited to work together and collaborate," she said. "Our goal is to integrate all these different ideas and opinions and I think we'll begin that at joint Senate."
MacKenzie Oatman, presidential candidate of Jayhawkers, said she was thankful the results were released but disappointed that Grow KU would take office without a majority of votes.
"I don't know how you can take office knowing you didn't receive the vote for it," Oatman said.
She said Jayhawkers plan to submit an appeal of the certified results to the Student Senate Court of Appeals.
- Kevin Hundelt, presidential candidate for Crimson and True, was unavailable for comment.
Edited by Jack Feigh
role-play situations in which one person was a caller and another the hotline worker. He described how the leader of the workshop presented a situation to them acting as the caller.
"She hits the table really hard and says, 'That was the first barrel of shotgun, I've got another barrel loaded; what are you going to do?'
"My mind just went blank — I was terrified," Hurst said. "It was interesting because even though it was a role-play, it becomes very serious very quickly. It drove home how the calls you get can be a teenager who just broke up with her boyfriend, or a middle-aged person who lost their job and their spouse left them and is literally driving down the road with a fifth of whiskey in their hand, about to drive off a bridge. You never know what you're going to get."
Hurst expects to finish the film in the fall of 2015. After an initial screening and some festival appearances, he hopes to release the film on video to bring further awareness to the issue of suicide.
He also hopes the audience will be able to connect and think about their own experiences in relation to those of the volunteers.
"A great experience is just meeting all these amazing people who are very comfortable in their own skin," Hurst said. "The people who do this, who volunteer, are not perfect people who have solved all of their own problems. They're all very human and fallible people."
HEADQUARTERS COUNSELING CENTER
The Center, 211 E. 8th St., is the Lifeline Center for Kansas — the representative of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in the state. The Center has one or two volunteers or staff members on call from 8 a.m. to midnight every day of the year. In addition to acting as a suicide hotline, it is also a resource for those who simply need someone to speak to about difficult times they may be having.
Hotline volunteers work four hour shifts at the Center, usually two shifts a week, answering typically eight to 12 calls each shift. Volunteers are selected after a vigorous application process, and after more than 100 hours of training, are required to participate in observation shifts under trained staff before being allowed to answer calls on their own, according to interim executive director Steve Lopes.
The Center currently has 30 counselors who are on the phones each week. Lopes said that the Center hopes to train more volunteers in the next months, which will allow the phone lines to remain open 24/7 each week starting July 1. Currently, calls made between midnight and 8 a.m. are transferred to a lifeline center in St. Louis.
THE VOLUNTEERS
Taylor Johnson, a senior from Eudora, is one of the Center's volunteers. As a psychology major, she originally applied to the program as a résumé-booster for her graduate school applications. However, through her time at the hotline, she said she discovered much more about herself than she knew before.
"It's made me a lot more aware of my own emotions. I used to put myself down and think, 'Oh, you're stupid for feeling that,' but now I can be more mindful of that," Johnson said. "I'm better at communicating emotions with other people and tuning into other people's emotions. When I got there, I realized I have an affinity for talking to
people and connecting with people after talking to [callers] for just a few minutes over the phone. That's what made me realize I wanted to be a counselor."
Rist, also a psychology major, applied in order to boost her graduate school résumé as well. However, as someone who has suffered depression and known suicide victims, she had a more personal connection to the program.
"I think [my experiences] have really helped me to be able to understand what people are feeling and why they are feeling it," Rist said. "When you're feeling depressed, it's hard to find the motivation to get up and do something. So I understand when people are talking and are like, 'I.I just don't know.' I can understand them a lot better that way."
Johnson described one experience she had on call, speaking to a woman who was experiencing relationship problems with her boyfriend.
"I kind of took off my counselor hat and was just me," she said. "She was like, 'If I had met you in person I know we would be friends,' and that was really cool for me to hear that. We definitely ended that call as kind of, like, friends."
Working with Hurst as a part of his documentary constantly reminds Johnson of the significance of her work at the hotline. Telling her story is yet another way for her to make an impact with what she is doing.
"With the interviews and that perspective, it forces you to take a step back and realize the magnitude of what we are doing," Johnson said. "It made me feel good because they are always there to remind us of how important it is and the difference we are making."
Rist emphasized the fact that a person need not be certified in any way to make a difference in someone's life, something she has learned from working at the Center.
Republican Gov. Mary Fallin-ordered a 14-day stay of execution for another inmate who was scheduled to die two hours after Lockett, Charles Warner. She also ordered the Department of Corrections to conduct a "full review of Oklahoma's execution procedures to determine what happened and why during this evening's execution."
"It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched." said Lockett's attorney, David Autry.
"They should have anticipated possible problems with an untried execution protocol. Obviously the whole thing was gummed up and batched from beginning to end. Halting the execution obviously did Lockett no good," Autry said.
About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily, writering on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow. After about three minutes, a doctor lifted the sheet that was covering Lockett to examine the injection site.
NATIONAL
already successfully carried out executions with their new supplies.
"There was some concern at that time that the drugs were not having that (desired) effect, and the doctor observed the line at that time and determined the line had blown," Patton said at a news conference afterward, referring to Lockett's vein rupturing.
States have been scrambling for drugs after drugmakers many based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty — stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.
The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state's top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings, although it didn't save Lockett.
After that, an official who was inside the death chamber lowered the blinds, preventing those in the viewing room from seeing what was happening.
The execution began at 6:23 p.m. when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m.
Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of the state's new three-drug combination was administered. Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.
Robert Patton, the director of the Department of Corrections, halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered, saying later there had been vein failure.
McAlester, Okla. — A botched execution using a disputed new drug combination left an Oklahoma inmate writhing and clenching his teeth on the gurney on Tuesday, leading prison officials to halt the proceedings before the inmate's eventual death from a heart attack.
Patton then made a series of phone calls before calling a halt to the execution.
Lockett's botched execution is sure to fuel the debate over the death penalty in the U.S., where several states have had to scramble to find new sources of execution drugs because drugmakers that oppose capital punishment — many based in Europe — stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.
"Anybody can help somebody that's going through a rough patch," she said. "You don't have to have some big fancy degree to be able to help somebody through one of the darkest parts of their lives. It's ok to talk about it — most of the time people just want to be able to talk about it."
Several states have gone to court to shield the identities of the new sources of their execution drugs. Missouri and Texas, like Oklahoma, have both refused to reveal their sources, but both of those states have
"After conferring with the warden, and unknown how much drugs went into him, it was my decision at that time to stop the execution," Patton told reporters.
Autry questioned the amount of the sedative midazolam that was given to Lockett, saying he thought that the 100 milligrams called for in the state's execution protocol was "an overdose quantity." He also was skeptical of the department's determination that Lockett's vein failed.
Edited by Cara Winkley
"I'm not a medical professional, but Mr. Lockett was not someone who had compromised veins. He was in very good shape. He had large arms and very prominent veins," Autry said.
Associated Press
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