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MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
CULTURE
Student makes Glamour's Top 10 College Women
KELSEY CIPOLLA
kcipolla@kansan.com
Traveling the world and capturing images of beauty in unexpected places earned Sarah Stern, a junior from Lawrence, a spot in the pages of this month's issue of Glamour. Stern was selected for the magazine's annual Top 10 College Women feature, which highlights the work of promising students across the country. It's just the latest chapter in Stern's exciting college experience, which has included documenting life in a gang-occupied slum in Rocinha, Brazil for three weeks. Those photos were recently released in a book, "Tavela Da Rocinha, Brazil." Proceeds from the book will go to local arts programs in the community where Stern captured the images.
Before leaving for Paragay, Stern spoke to the Kansan about her adventures and seeing herself in print.
Q: How did you get started taking photographs in Latin America?
A: I put together the things that I love, I love photography, I love
people and I love traveling. It just seemed like a natural fit.
Q: You've had some interesting encounters on your travels, including a brush with a gang lord after he stole your partner's camera. What was that experience like?
A: We were in the favela. He lost his camera because he was taking photos where he shouldn't have been taking photos. He accidentally snapped a photo of someone selling drugs and they came and took his camera from him. I started networking for the next week and a half and that eventually led to him getting his camera back.
I think it was one of those moments where I looked back later and was like, "You are so lucky." But in the moment, it was adrenaline. I just knew that I had to be ok, but I didn't have to be ok obviously. I could have been in a lot of trouble. Later he was arrested. It was in the New York Times. He didn't look like a ganglord like you would expect. He wasn't super scary or anything, but later on, reading the article, I found out he was
like cremating people in the forest.
Q: What was the process like to become one of Glamour's top 10 college women?
A: I was on my way back from Brazil, and I bought a Glamour at the airport. I was reading it on the way back and thought "hmm..." Basically, it's an application process. I turned in some photos and an essay, then the interview process lasted three months. They would call and ask questions. Then they sent an e-mail saying I was a finalist. I was just ecstatic. I think I was in the library studying for something, and I ran outside and called my mom.
Q: Any plans for the future yet?
A: There are a lot of things that I'm trying to combine. I'm trying to fulfill a lot of interests. I have these things that I love and I know them and I know me really well. I try to keep my eyes open for the next opportunity. They have a way of just landing on my doorstep. I try to stay open for the next thing.
Edited by Caroline Kraft
GLAMOUR
CONTRIBUTED BY
Sara Stern, a budding entrepreneur and photographer, volunteers with the organization Fundacion Paraguay and works with local women's groups in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Paraguay.
TUNING IN
Oil prospectors flock to Kansas' plains
STATE
CLAIR HOWARD/KANSAN
ASSOCAITED PRESS
Carl Spaeth, a doctorate student of musical arts in saxophone, performs Sonata for Eb Alto Saxophone, op. 19, accompanied by Holly Beneventi Page on piano during a student recital at Swarthout Recital Hall Saturday evening. The piece is composed of three different movements: With Vigor, With Tranquility, With Gaiety.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two men work on an oil rig in Kansas' Gypsum hills on Feb. 21. Oil companies have come to south-central Kansas in droves looking to find oil reserves below the ground. The prospect of oil is revitalizing the economies in small-town Kansas.
MEDICINE LODGE, Kan. — Between the buttes and rolling terrain of the Gypsum Hills in south-central Kansas, a massive drilling rig grinds deep into the earth, seeking to reach the oil-rich Mississippi Lime formation buried some 5,000 feet deep. Just beyond the rig, Robert Murdock intently watches its progress and waxes confidently about the wealth under his feet.
"It will enrich the area in a way it never has before economically," the independent oilman says loudly, nearly shouting to be heard above the cacophony of clanging pipes and heavy equipment.
central Kansas, a gold rush-style hunt for oil and gas that players say could yield big returns not just for oil producers but also for the state's economy. The boom is occurring even as natural gas exploration begins to slow nationally.
Prospectors like Murdock are punching holes across south-
In county courthouses across much of Kansas, scores of researchers comb through dusty land records stacked atop folding tables set up in hallways for them, toilering for producers and speculators alike who are scrambling to snap up millions of acres of mineral rights. Leases which just three years ago went for $30 an acre are now fetching $3,000 an acre in drilling hotspots. Awe-struck real estate agents watch incredulously as mineral rights fetch higher prices than the land itself.
old rural roads.
Murdock, president of Hutchinson-based Osage Resources, is among a handful of producers behind an emerging oil boom sparked by modern technologies using horizontal drilling and a technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to coax out oil and gas. Companies have already reaped fortunes off the Mississippi Lime Play in Oklahoma and are now following the rock formation northward into Kansas, where millions of acres of mineral rights have been leased in the past two or three years.
"It is going to change things forever in this part of the world," Murdock said.
If the Mississippian Lime Play
Look hard and you can see the first hints of change wafting through once sleepy rural hamlets. It's already tough to find a hotel room for the night or a rental property to live in. There's talk of possibly setting up "man camps" outside towns to house the anticipated influx of oilfield workers. Restaurants now seem busier than usual. And the local traffic sure feels like it has picked up on those
unfolds as expected, the economic boost in Kansas could be enormous. Severance taxes will swell state's coffers. Landowners will reap royalties. Oilfield workers will find hundreds, if not thousands, of good jobs typically paying $50,000 annually. Main Street business in countess small towns will thrive again.
"This represents an exciting opportunity for growing the Kansas economy while helping to secure greater energy independence for the country," Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said. "It means more jobs and revenue here, fewer American dollars sent abroad. Trying this with our growth in wind energy production will make us a leading energy producing state."
The potential production from the Mississippian Lime Play — and its impact on domestic energy supplies — remains uncertain. But the use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to unlock energy supplies previously unavailable in the United States is now in play in places like Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
"We believe this is a game changer," said Shell spokesman Scott Scheffler. "And we hope the Mississippian will be one piece of that."
"We are excited about it and we are hopeful," said Ed Cross, president of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association. "We just want to be cautious looking at the potential. We don't want to overstate it."
Just ask Kevin White, senior vice president of business development at Oklahoma-based SandRidge Energy Inc. His company has already spent $350 million to acquire nearly 2 million acres of mineral rights in Kansas and Oklahoma — with a majority of those leased acres located across a vast swath of central Kansas.
But with horizontal drilling still in its infancy here, all those economic impacts have yet to be fully felt. Locals, who have seen other oil booms come and go, remain wary.
"Kansas as a percentage of what we are doing will just get bigger and bigger every year because it has got the most undrilled acre- age left that we need to go drill." White said.
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