Thursday, September 21, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 3
Mock Trial Team exempt from expense rules
By Kursten Phelps
writer@kanson.com
Kanson stoff writer
The KU Mock Trial Team cleared its first hurdle toward acquiring more money from Student Senate last night after two Senate committees passed a bill exempting the group from a funding restriction.
STUDENT
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
SENATE
Senate would have to approve the bill for the exemption to take effect. If passed, the team still would have to petition the finance committee for the money.
Currently, Senate does not grant money for travel expenses for student organizations, with a few exceptions, including the Marching Jayhawks and KU Forensics. Last night, the Senate Finance and Student Rights committees approved the Mock Trial Team as another exception to that rule.
The team already receives money for basic expenses such as advertising and postage.
Branden Bell, president of the Mock Trial Team, said travel was a critical part of the group's existence.
"In order to compete and become a national competitor, we need to go to meets," Bell said. "We've been able to barely afford to go to nationals."
The team, which has about 25 members, competes in tournaments that act out a trial in a courtroom format based on a case published by the American Mock Trial Association. Bell said.
Dallas Rakestraw, Nunemaker senator and co-sponsor of the bill, said the group, which is in its fourth year, deserved to be an exception to the travel-funding restriction. The group has qualified for the national tournament every year since it started.
"I saw the same bill last year, and it was voted down because the committee felt the team did not have enough of a track record," Rakesstraw said. "They have gone out and shown that they are good, that they are a contender and will raise money."
Bell said the team did not plan to ask Senate for money for travel expenses unless it could not raise enough money on its own.
He said if the team asked for travel money, the amount likely would not exceed $2,000. Senate allocated $65,000 for travel this year to the Marching Jayhawks. KU Forensics received $11,000.
Corey Snyder, education senator, voted against the bill.
"To make them exempt causes a lot of problems for other organizations that could possibly use Student Senate money for travel." Snyer said. "It opens a barn door for other groups to want to be an exception, too."
Senate will vote on the bill at its Wednesday's meeting at 6:30 p.m.
— Edited by Warisa Chulindra
End-of-life choices tough for families
By Jason Krall
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Family members of nursing home patients often are unprepared to make decisions about their loved one's end-of-life care, a University of Kansas Medical Center researcher has found.
Even when a patient has long suffered from chronic illness and memory loss, family members often are not ready to make decisions on issues such as whether to use a feeding tube or take measures to resuscitate the study found.
Part of the problem is that long-termcare personnel often had not discussed the decisions with family ahead of time, said Susan Forbes, the assistant professor of nursing who conducted the study.
Forbes interviewed the families of patients with severe dementia in four Kansas City-area nursing homes. Most of them had not even considered end-of-life decisions, even if their family member was nearing death, she said.
"It surprised us that they were so far from thinking about those things," she said. "They were just dealing with day-to-day events."
Paula Volkmann, Omaha, Neb., sophomore, cared for patients with dementia and Alzheimer's disease at a nursing home in her home town this summer. She said she wasn't surprised by the study's findings, because dealing with end-of-life issues often was most difficult when the patient no longer recognizes family members.
"I think that's the hardest thing — when you can't communicate with the person who's dying — it makes it hard to let go," she said. "You can't bring closure."
The study concluded that nursing home staff and health care personnel need to discuss end-of-life issues with relatives ahead of time and that they need to provide more information, counseling and emotional support.
"Based on the severity of the patients' dementia, we assumed that most of the participants would be well into acceptance of the dying process." Forbes said. "But we were wrong. Death was not part of the day-to-day experience of the family members, largely because they lacked information and emotional support. A lot of them were still trying to deal with the guilt of putting their loved one in a nursing home."
Forbes said families seemed equally unprepared, despite differing ethnic backgrounds and financial situations.
"We looked to see if ethnicity and economic factors influence end-of-life decision making." Forbes said. "We didn't find differences."
The KU Center on Aging funder Forbes' study. Its findings are published in the current issue of The Journal of Nursing Scholarship.
— Edited by Clay McCuistion
Native-American group helps, educates students
By Leita Schultes
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Shelley Bointy said she would not have lasted at the University of Kansas if not for the First Nations Student Association.
"It was I first came to KU it was so big — I was really intimidated," said the Poplar, Mont., senior.
But now Bointy is president of the association.
and she is ready to graduate.
She said the group provided much-needed social support to the small number of
Native-American students on campus last fall there were only 237.
"I will go all week and not see another FNSA student," she said. "That only increases our isolation."
not see another "INSA student," she said. "That only increases your isolation." Dina Drye, office assistant and Web site historian for the Indigenous Studies Program, said that the organization was a way for Native-American students to feel connected.
But the organization is open to all nationalities, she said, and many students are involved just to learn about Native-American culture. Events throughout the year allow members of the group to demonstrate that culture.
Bointy said the group would put on an Indigenous People's Survival Day on Wescoe Beach to coincide with Columbus Day, Monday, Oct. 9.
Members also participate in a Haskell Indian
Nations University mentoring program for transfer students, and much time is spent on preparing an annual powwow.
Bointy said student turnout for the powwow had been poor in the past, which was unfortunate.
conference for Native American students from universities in the Big 12 Conference, Bointy said. Both the powwow and conference will take place during the third week of April.
This year, the association also is sponsoring a leadership
"They're able to see our culture — how we practice one aspect of it today," she said. "It may get them past the idea that our culture
only existed in the past."
Many Native Americans believe they are a forgotten minority. Bounty said.
"Personally, I think it's because a lot of people want us to go away," she said.
Clyde Bellecourt, who co-founded the national American Indian Movement in 1968. agreed.
He said that Americans felt guilty for past treatment of Native Americans.
Both Bointy and Bellecourt pointed to education as an area that needed improvement.
Bointy said western civilization requirements failed to teach Native-American history. Students become incensed about the Jewish holocaust, Bointy said, but don't realize the same thing happened to Native Americans in the United States in the 1800s.
Bellecourt said America needed to rid itself of what he called the John Wayne mentality.
"America today — as far as Indians are concerned — is just totally scholastically retarded," he said.
Teaching assistant finds niche in Kansas
- Edited by Clay McCuistion
J. D. McKee
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The 46-year-old Baker alumnus had lived in Miami for 10 years when he returned to Baldwin City without a job or a place to stay.
One University of Kansas teaching assistant has found out there's no place like home.
"I'd been teaching high school the last few years and I didn't know if that's what I wanted to do." Ehinger said.
father and friend.
He was a welcome addition to the house, said Aaron Hollingshead, Kappa Sigma vice president.
A midlife crisis and a bit of serendipity caused Ehinger to land the job with his former Baker fraternity when he learned of the opening at Kappa Sigma. But he said he thought this would only be a temporary position.
He said Ehinger, who is working on a graduate degree in sports administration at the University of Kansas, filled the role of both
"Since he's an alum and has lived here, anytime we have a problem and we think we're not going to get through it, we ask him what his class would have done." Hollingshead said.
Ehinger also is a graduate teaching assistant for ballroom dance and football-coaching classes at the University of Kansas.
"It was a place where everyone's parents made them to learn etiquette, but I had fun," he said.
He learned ballroom dance when he attended a dance school during high school.
Ehinger said he was a little nervous about teaching the class because he had not really danced since high school. During the summer, he brushed up on his moves and went back to his old dance school to get video tapes of some of the dances.
"I'm the kind of guy that if someone gives me a job to do, I want to know exactly what I'm doing before I go in," he said.
Five years after a midlife crisis brought him back to Kansas with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Ehinger seems to have found his niche at being a house dad at Baker and a teaching assistant at the University of Kansas.
"I thought I was only going to do it one year," he said. "But things just fell into place."
- Edited by Amy Randolph
Richard Ehinger, dancing instructor, watches as students Misha Thonson, Lawrence freshman, and Sam Lee, Lawrence senior, dance the cha-cha. Ehinger teaches ballroom dancing at the University and is a house dad at his former fraternity, Kappa Sigma, at Baker University. Photo by Selena Jabara/KANSAN
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