THURSDAY,APRIL10,2003
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
Student studies unusual Mexican immigrant enclave
By Amy Potter apotter@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
Every year immigrants from Mexico arrive in southwestern Kansas looking for jobs and places to call home. Surprisingly, one group crossing the border doesn't speak Spanish. Its native language is Low German.
Lisa Mays, a doctoral student in Germanic languages and literatures, is studying Low Germanspeaking Mennonites living in southwestern Kansas. The Mennonites have been leaving Mexico since the 1970s to escape poverty.
day Poland and migrated to Ukraine, Canada, Mexico and now southwestern Kansas.
The Mennonites trace their origins back to the northern lowlands of the Netherlands and Germany. They picked up their Low German dialect in modern-
Mays is conducting a sociolinguistic study examining both language and culture.
Mays said it was a rarity that the group managed to keep its language more than 200 years away from its homeland.
“It’s kind of like a petri dish,” she said. “The language has not changed much and is now no longer spoken in the area they first picked it up, which was Prussia. You go back in time literally.”
at the South Gray Community Learning Center in Montezuma.
Mays travels every other week to the southwestern Kansas towns of Sublette and Montezuma.
She contacts the Mennonites through church and home visits. Some evenings, Mays volunteers
The Mennonites come to the center to learn English. The center has 31 students and about half are the Low German-speaking Mennonites, said Susan Riphan, learning center coordinator.
Donovan Atkinson/Kansan
"I think they appreciate the fact that someone's there that speaks German and is interested in learning their dialect. It makes them feel more at home," Riphan said.
Mays said the Mennonites were honest and hard working.
"At the same time they have several issues because they are torn between several cultures," she said. "I can't imagine what it's like to move to another country and re-establish myself."
May's research is part of a
larger project documenting the different German dialects in Kansas. She is the first person to study this specific Mennonite group coming out of Mexico, said Bill Keel, professor of German.
"We need to understand who these people are so we can assist them in living in Kansas," Weel said.
Schools in western Kansas have to find ways to teach the Mennonite children English in English as a second language programs. This can be a difficult task because Low German-speaking peoples are rare.
"This issue is affecting the state in 2003. This is not a hobby,not
something we can do just because we have a lot of extra time. It's a critical issue." Keel said.
Mays received the Max Kade Scholarship,worth $12,000, to assist her in research costs.
She has written two chapters of her dissertation with plans to finish around Christmas. She will present her findings in August 2004.
Mays said she didn't know where this research would take her in the future.
"With a topic like this it could very easily become someone's career," Mays said. "It depends where I work if I find a college or research institution to sponsor my research. There are many more aspects to be examined."
— Edited by Andrew Ward
KU on Wheels to change its routes
By Cate Batchelder
cbatchelder@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The transportation board has canceled some and added other KU on Wheels bus routes to take effect in the fall.
Big changes include canceling the north Lawrence night route and adding a bus stop by The Legends, a new apartment complex at 4101 W. 24th Place, said Tim Akright, transportation coordinator.
The changes were made in response to requests made from students and housing managers. Requests were made to change the routes at the public route hearing earlier this semester. The hearing takes place every spring, but suggestions were welcomed anytime.
Instead, the board tries to stay with it, he said.
“It's pretty obvious that the student body migrates in where it lives from year to year.” Akright said. “It's hard to stay ahead of it."
Aaron Quisenberry, transportation board adviser, said the changes were made to best serve the interests of the students. No services were lost, and most of the bus riders are still being picked up, he said.
Akright said the changes would not increase student fees.
The new recreation center was added to the free night route. If enough people ride, Quisenberry said, a day route could be added.
Any comments, questions, or route change suggestions can be directed to the KU on Wheels office, 410 Kansas Union, kuowheels@ku.edu or at 864-4644.
The board will continue to look at further bus route changes and will make modifications as the need arises, Akright said.
BUS ROUTE CHANGES AND ADDITIONS:
The transportation board finalized next year's KU on Wheels bus routes.
- Edited by Todd Rapp
Canceled day routes
- Route 3 — Naismith-Oliver Hall
- Route 7 — 15th and Crestline
- Route 10 — 22nd and Kasold
Added and/or changed day routes
Route X----24th and Inverness. It will make roundtrip stops from campus to Naismith and Oliver halls, Stewart Avenue housing area, The Legends and Parkway Commons.
Route Y — 15th and Kasold, which will leave campus on 15th Street and make stops to Meadowbrook Apartments and the loop near Orchard Corners.
Canceled night routes Routes 12, 14 and 15.
Routes 12,14 and 15
Added and/or changed routes
Route Z — the free night loop, which will combine services to areas of the on-campus express night route and the off-camps south night route. It will exclude the portion west of Iowa Street but include the new recreation center.
Source: Tim Akright, transportation coordinator
The Associated Press
WICHITA — Military officials assured the wife of a Kansas soldier held captive in Iraq his name was not on one of the bloodied uniforms found inside an Iraqi prison, a family member said yesterday on a condition of anonymity.
But the family still did not know the fate of Army Pfc. Patrick Miller, who was last seen last month on Iraqi television answering questions in a shaky voice.
Miller, 23, was captured on March 23 after the 507th Maintenance Company was ambushed March 23 near Nasiriyah.
At a war briefing, U.S. Central Command spokesman Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said soldiers found some U.S. uniforms — possibly from American POWs — at a prison
on Baghdad's southeastern edge. No bodies were found at the prison.
Jessa Miller and the couple's two children — 4-year-old Tyler and 7-month-old Makenzie — moved from Texas, where Patrick Miller was based at Fort Bliss, to Park City to be closer to family after he was sent overseas in December.
Pastor Ron Pracht, minister of Olivet Southern Baptist Church in Wichita, married the couple shortly before his deployment and has been acting as a spokesman for the family since Miller was captured.
He said yesterday the family was heartened by the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old supply clerk with the 507th, from an Iraqi hospital after an Iraqi came forward with information about her whereabouts.
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