MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 2013
PAGE 4A
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
What ever happened to the guy who streaked through Anschutz?
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
Shoutout to the people who take the bus even on nice days
It's been three days...why haven't I seen Wiggins yet??
At what time in the year does it start being acceptable to skip my 9am class?
I don't care what I wear to class because it's just going to be covered in sweat anyway
Every semester, I tell myself I'll start taking notes and then 5 minutes later I'm on buzzfeed
The freshmen at the rec are finally making me feel swole
Rest in peace, Boomer Welsh
LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY
New semester, time to commence my coffee addiction
The construction crew did a really super job on that half-block of Jayhawk Bivd.
Some dude nailed me with a water balloon out of the passenger window. Plotting my revenge.
So, how's that whole alcohol.edu thing working out?
It's really starting to frustrate me that famous people are younger than me and I just watch Netflix all day.
That concert poster that had Chance the Rapper and Earl on it was the biggest tese ever. I wanna die.
Sometimes I wave at dogs and then I get really sad when they don't wave back.
This week will be marked by people telling me their names and then me forgetting them.
My first class is at noon tomorrow and I'm still setting an alarm.
Lady Gaga is eventually just going to have to kill a puppy on stage to keep pushing the envelope.
Sure, I'll join your club. Yeah, here's my email address. So can I get that t-shirt or what?
From child guest on Barney to winning the VMAs, Selena Gomez "started from the Barney."
Note to self: shamelessly bring bag for all the free swag to next year's Hawk Week Block Party.
str^& intox dude! can you give me a ride to Pizza Shuttle?
Lady Gaga looked all too similar to Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black...scary
Birth control options abundant, accessible on campus
Some of you Jayhawks, from what I can gather from every single bar I've ever been to in Lawrence on a Friday night, are interested in sex. You might be frequently having sex. You might infrequently be having sex. You might not have had sex, but want to have it in the near-future. You might be having sex with a casual partner or with someone you're in a relationship with. You might be having sex with a person who is biologically male, or biologically female, or both. The fact of the matter is, despite the kind of sexual activity you do or do not engage in, if you're someone who can get pregnant, or you're going to have sex with someone who can get pregnant, you should probably consider using contraception aka birth control.
This is under the assumption that since y'all are students, you might not exactly want a bun in the oven anytime soon. If that's
not the case, let me know if you need a babysitter, because while I'm currently hanging an "out of order" sign on my oven, babies are pretty cute (from a distance, belonging to someone else, and again, not in my womb). But, if your feelings are similar to mine, and you'd like to avoid pregnancy, here's some tips about accessing birth control while a student at the University.
1. There are lots of different birth control methods. I'm guessing most of you know about condoms and oral contraceptives, or, "the pill". But those aren't your only options. Reversible birth control methods are divided into three categories: intrauterine contraception, such as an IUD; hormonal methods, like the pill, but also including many others like the patch and a hormonal implant; and barrier methods, such as good-old fashioned condoms, as well new-fangled female condoms,
By Katherine Gwynn
kgwynn@kansan.com
spermicide, and diaphragms. It's best to use at least two methods of birth control, each being in a different birth control category (so pairing a hormonal method with a barrier method for example). Bedsider.org is a great resource to check out what birth control method is best for you.
2. As of August 2013, all employer-based insurance plans must include some type of coverage of birth control without co-pay, so if you have health insurance and you want or need birth control, congrats! As a side-note, if you still have a co-pay on birth control, call your health insurance provider—you may need to switch to the generic or brand-name of your current birth control method, or switch to a different version.
3. If you don't have health insurance, there are still ways for you to get affordable birth control. The Lawrence Public Health Department offers a sliding scale on birth control, making it far more affordable to students- it's also completely confidential. This is important if you're in a situation where you're dependent on someone else's health insurance and want to be on birth control, but whoever you're dependent on for health insurance wouldn't support you being on birth control. The LPHD is super helpful, and will work with you to try to best navigate your situation.
4. If you live in the residence halls or scholarship halls, guess what? Free condoms for you! You can usually get them at the check-in desk if you're in the dorms, or find them tucked in with the health supplies in schol-hall land. If you don't feel comfortable getting condoms from your
on-campus housing, you can get condoms (and female condoms, and dental dams, and lube, and feminism) from the Commission on the Status of Women's Cube in the SILC office, located on the 4th floor of the Union, all for the low, low price of nothing.
5. If you're not sold on free condoms, you can also buy them super cheap from Watkins Pharmacy on campus. The average price for most of them is three for 50 cents plus tax. That means for a dollar, you get six rounds of safe, no-pregnancy fun! What a deal.
Basically, birth control is awesome, varied, in your proximity, and very much affordable. So what are you waiting for? Go get your not-babymaking on.
Katherine Gwynn is a junior studying English and women, gender and sexuality studies. Follow her @AllidisGwynn.
SCIENCE
Environment discussions depend upon research instead of politics
The public is only concerned with the environment when it's economically
when its economically convenient. During the Great Recession, all climate change regulation was out the window as America recovered. Now that recovery is underway, billions of stimulus dollars have found their way to cleaner technology subsidies while all oil and gas activities - from tighter oil to tar sands, pipelines to offshore drilling - are again receiving extra scrutiny. Hell, even the bankrupt city of Detroit found the funds to scrutinize a pile of petroleum coke - a refining byproduct and a coal substitute. There's nothing explicitly terrible with the intensified regulation - oil and gas businesses are familiar with the challenging policy environment - aside from opportunity cost. However, it has become too easy to derail the energy-future discussion. There's just too much arm-waving getting in the way of a great discussion on what it's going to take to get to a better energy future.
"Arm-waving" is another way of saying distracting. Imagine the cheesy movies where one pseudo-hero claims "I'm going to make a distraction!" and then proceeds to do something very silly to distract the villain. I refer to the biggest arm-waving culpits as "the aggregators." They're smart people with great media experience. They read. They synthesize. They write. They find great data and combine it in all sorts of ways, interpreting it to their desired outcome. But, they lack the technical experience to know when what they're arguing is absurd, enflaming all kinds of people.
Let's think about how this impacts hydraulic fracturing. It isn't uncommon to hear someone exclaim that "We just don't know what toxic chemicals are going into the ground during fracting." That claim is just a distraction;
By Chris Ouyang couyang@kansan.com
the real question is whether or not these chemicals are finding their way back to the surface. And if they aren't, then what's the hollering about? There is a definite precedence for storing industrial waste and harsh chemicals underground - see Class I through VI disposal well permitting from the EPA.
But let's entertain the aggregators. What if those harsh chemicals and natural gas itself finds its way to my drinking water? That could be a serious problem. Don't quote flammable water in Pennsylvania. That myth has been debunked years ago; not only is methane naturally occurring in some aquifers there, coal beds produce methane and Pennsylvania is full of coal mining towns.
What then about the Duke Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study showing higher concentrations of methane (natural gas) in water sources? That study was published just this last year. Now we have a conversation. The aggregators wave a powerful study proving their point. However, if you do a quick Google search for the study and add the word "rebuttal", you find that there's equally damning evidence discounting the study as legitimate. The oil and gas companies remain resolute.
So now we're at square one, a stalemate. The public isn't going to sit down and study the correlation methods used by those Duke researchers. They're relying on information from incredibly unreliable sources, perhaps the natural gas company itself, or environmental groups whose funding depends on shunning any fracking activity. Of course, the public also lacks technical understanding and picks up whatever their side puts
down. The argument continues as everyone tries to influence government policy.
Educating everyone with technical understanding isn't the key to resolving the stalemate. No one is incentivized to collaborate; what difference does it make what they think or know? This is the crux of the issues facing the energy industry.
The energy future isn't about cutting the price at the pump. That's a red herring. It's about trying to preserve the quality of life enjoyed today. What are you willing to pay for electricity? Travel? Air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter? No one who thinks critically about the energy future has ever claimed that "fracking" is a silver bullet; it's well understood that this stimulation method is a powerful addition to a portfolio of oil and gas extraction techniques.
What does that mean for us here at the University? I'll be writing critically about energy issues all year; I will do my best to not wave my arms as a tree hugger or an evil, greedy oilman. It's complex: an entire novel could be written about how water transportation related to oil production is destroying municipal roads in Pennsylvania or how the U.S. is putting itself at an international competitive disadvantage by refusing to burn coal. Join me for a year of thinking critically about energy. Let's stop aggregating and arm waving, together.
Chris Ouyang is a senior studying petroleum engineering and economics from Overland Park, Kan Follow him @ChrisOuyang
Chris Ouyang is a senior studying
LIFESTYLE
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
Class starts tomorrow: what will you ACTUALLY be doing on your computer while your professor reads the syllabus?
Follow us on Twitter @UDK. Opinion.
Tweet us your opinions, and we just
might publish them.
Freshman mistakes lead to senior wisdom
Trevor Graff, editor-in-chief editor@kansan.com
Allison Kohn, managing editor akohn@kansan.com
So you find yourself on campus, and you're probably wondering what to do with yourself. There are classes to go to, an overwhelming number of books to buy and about twenty different activities demanding your attention all at once. As a senior going into her fourth year of this experience, believe me, it doesn't get any less hectic. For most of us, a new school year is like a fresh start, a way to get back on track, improve and discover. Everyone always associates this mentality with freshman; I often hear it phrased somewhat like, "The freshmen are crazy 'cause they're trying to make a new identity for themselves." But in truth, college students are just crazy
Dylan Lysen, managing editor dysen@kansan.com
Personally, I spent the first semester of my freshman year completely overwhelmed by my academic and social life (or lack thereof). As the daughter of two educators, and someone who holds herself to high academic standards, I worried profusely that I wouldn't get good grades. And if I wasn't worrying about my homework, I was worrying that I wasn't meeting enough people because I was too busy worrying about my homework. Needless to say, I made my first semester pretty rough for myself.
What I discovered quickly into my second semester, however, is that everything gets easier (or at least less overwhelming) the second time around. And once I realized that I could still get good grades without thinking about class 24/7 it became more a matter of finding a balance between classes and people, than devoting myself to one and forgetting the other.
This is easier said than done. I've spent many nights staying in with the intention of studying, only to spend the evening watching countless Youtube videos. While this makes for great conversation topics later on, it isn't really conducive to either academics or a social life. Besides, the whole point of a new school year is getting out there, participating, and trying new things, right? Trolling the internet into the wee hours of the night probably isn't going to help you achieve any personal goals (unless trolling the internet is your goal).
So, as a senior at the University, I've made a list of tips I wish someone had shared with me early
HOW TO SUBMIT A LETTER TO THE EDITOR
**Length:** 300 words
The submission should include the author's name, grade and hometown. Find our full letter to the editor policy online at kansan.com/letters.
Remember, college is full of opportunity and experience, and starting the year off strong is huge in making your time here all it can be. If I'd gotten these tips early on, my first semester freshman year would've looked very different. Do yourself a favor and take some initiative to make this year exactly what you want it to be.
5. Don't get bogged down. While ultimately you're here to graduate and get a job, don't get so caught up in the strangeness of college life or the idea of the future that you can't enjoy yourself and be responsible. You can have it your way, but don't get crazy.
Will Webber, opinion editor
wwebber@kansan.com
LETTER GUIDELINES
Send letters to kansaopnep@gmail.com. Write
LETTER TO THE EDITOR in the e-mail subject line.
By Tasha Cerny
tcerny@kansan.com
Mollie Pointer , business manager
mpointer@kansan.com
4. Make a college bucket list.
How else can you say you truly experienced the University and Lawrence? A few things on my bucket list include swimming in the Chi Omega Fountain, trying every restaurant on Mass Street and studying abroad.
Sean Powers,sales manager spowers@kansan.com
3. Make a list of goals. Since classes are my number one priority, my personal list involves mainly socialization and being active. It's really not a good year until you've made a few new friends, awkwardly trying to learn a new sport or workout regime.
1. Be proactive. Get involved, initiate things, stay on top of homework. Seems simple enough, but with so much unsupervised freedom, the ease and temptation to put off everything and watch Netflix becomes tenfold. I watched every season of 30 Rock my freshman year. Tina Fey is my spirit animal, but you can't put that on a resume.
on in my college career:
2. Keep a schedule. Mapping out what your average week will look like, including class times, commitments, and designated recreational time will help you see exactly how much time you have each week to devote to social activities, studying, and doing anything else (like going down to the coffee shop to stare at the attractive barista).
@UDK_Opinion incognito tabs and a seat at the very back of class...
@ButterEmUp
@SieARose
@UDK_Opinion Shamelessly scrolling through tumblr for things about One Direction. #sorrynotsorry
CONTACT US
Brett Akagi) media director & content strategist bakagi@kansan.com
Jon Schitt, sales and marketing adviser
ischlitt@kansan.com
THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Members of the Kansas Editorial Board are Trevor Gratt, Allison Kohn, Dylan Lyon, Will Webber, Mollie Pointer and Sean Powers.
1