6
University Daily Kansan
Campus/Area
Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1985
3
Bv Jill White
Of the Kansan staff
Walking through the warehouse door into a room of punk rock dancers jumping off bandstands and onto other people shocked the 32-year-old graduate student as he waded in water with his ninety position in this social setting.
A self-proclaimed 60s rocker,
Bernard Kuperman, Lawrence
graduate student, found the spiked
hair, tattered clothing, harsh cos-
metics and dancing techniques grip-
less poses and mudding his
experiment.
Kuperman's experiment was part of a required business survey course designed by professor Renate Mai-Dalton five semesters ago to teach students to understand and appreciate diversity, rather than be afraid of it.
Mai-Dalton uses experiential teaching as a follow-up learning experience to theoretical lectures and discussions of individual differences in abilities, motivation, perception and learning in both her undergraduate course, Organizational Behavior, BUS 479, and her graduate course, Human Behavior in Organizations, BUS 801.
"I figured I would be a minority member by virtue of being about 10 years older than everybody else at the dance," Kuperman said. "But my first reaction was to their dress and to the ways that they dress."
However, the longer Kuperman stayed at the warehouse, the more he was able to identify with the punkers and to understand their perspective on communication
He said, "I began to look at faces and realized that regardless of whatever trappings a generation will put themselves into, they still face the same questions of how to get along and how to meet other people.
"Every generation has a need to establish their separateness and identity, and they usually do it by being kind of out of step."
Kuperman's experience was not unique. Mali-Dalton said most students who participated in the experiment behave and the behavior of others.
"It's important for people in our society to accept other people who are different from the way they are," Mal-Dalton said. "It is also personally enriching for students to learn from new experiences and different perspectives."
By incorporating lectures on group dynamics and individual differences, Mai-Dalton said students were able interpret why their experiences were different rather than just knowing they were different.
"It is difficult for most students who have grown up in a middle class, homogeneous environment, to understand and appreciate individuals from backgrounds that are different from their own," Mai-Dalton said.
Since most business students will have the responsibility to lead workers from a variety of backgrounds and foreign countries, it's necessary for students to acquire skills to deal with culturally different populations, she said.
The "Minority Exercise" requires that the students go alone to an unfamiliar place where they will be a cultural experience and experience cultural diversity.
Mai-Dalton defines "experiencing cultural diversity" as any experience in an environment chosen by the student that the student perceives as different fon the environment to which he or she is accustomed.
some students attend different religious services, different racial- group activities, physically or mentally handicapped groups, settings with sexual minorities or different ethnic-group activities.
Brian Jeter, 25. Prairie Village graduate student, visited an innercity, high school during the lunch period.
"Obviously in the minority, I felt very out of place." Jeter said. "It made me feel very strange with all those people staring at me."
But Jeter said he developed an empathy for the high school students' perceptions and feelings by the time he left and felt the experience was beneficial.
“Once you internalize the (classroom) knowledge with experiences, you can get the feeling of what it’s like to be in the minority.” Teter said.
Although many students have positive experiences as Kuperman and Jeter did, Mal-Dalton said it would be a mistake to assume that all students had experiences with happy endings.
A small group discussion follows the individual activities, and the group members discuss similarities and differences of their experiences and advantages and disadvantages of the exercise.
Students also evaluate what their experiences meant to them; how they might behave differently if they were permanently in a minority position in our society and at their places of work, and how their motivation to work, study and achieve might be affected.
"In a few cases, students are strongly prejudiced toward culturally diverse groups and carry their prejudices into the exercise. Mal-Dalton said.
Most students, however, can better empathize with members of culturally diverse groups after the exercise and feel that they will apply these new insights to current and future relationships in their personal and working lives, she said.
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By Karen Blakeman Of the Kansan staff
Pigeon droppings present health risk
A sign in the women's restroom window on the first floor of Strong Hall contains the following message:
"I know it's very warm in here, but please do not open this window. The pigeons on the ledge have mites and lice."
Clifford Powers, a custodian at Strong Hall, said last week that the sign had been placed in the restroom a long time ago.
"When the women would open the window to get some air, the pigeons would fly right in," he said.
Phil Endacott, associate director of facility operations housekeeping, said the pigeons created a health problem.
"Pigeons are carriers of mites," he said, "and their droppings contain bacterial spores which can be passed on to humans and make them very sick.
"The problem with Strong Hall is there are no screens on the windows, and the halls are not air conditioned. People open the windows, and the building becomes a barn for pigeons."
Richard Johnston, professor of
'If you went around with a teaspoon and sampled enough droppings,you might become ill.'
Richard Johnston professor of systematics and ecology and curator in ornithology, Museum of Natural History
systematics and ecology and ornithology curator for the Museum of Natural History, said that he agreed pigeons could be a nuisance at times, but he also said that the problems pigeons cause from people's apprehensions from any actual health threat."
Johnston said that pigeons carried "bird lice," which are members of the mite family — but these parasites were "very adapted to pigeons, not to other birds and certainly not to humans," he said.
"If one gets on you, it tickles." Pigeon droppings, Johnston said, could contain organisms that can survive outside the earth and occurs worldwide in cattle, sheep and swine. But he said the disease was not a threat to humans.
pigeons nesting near the air conditioners.
"If you went around with a teas
"They putty on the windowsill," she said, "and it doesn't smell very nice when the odor comes through the air vents. They stay away from the windows that don't have air conditioners."
poon and sampled enough pigeon droppings, you might be ill," he said. "Pigeons in various places over the last 40 years have had some nasty diseases, but that's very unusual."
Johnston, who has been research- ching the general life characteristics of the pigeons who live on Dyche Hall, said that he and one of his students had banded, weighed and measured more than 600 pigeons during the last $2^{1 / 2}$ years.
"Some people around here really don't like them at all. One man knocks the nests off the ledges with a broom."
"We have not had any adverse effects, so if the two of us can be used as an example, I guess you can handle at least 300 pigeons and not be concerned about health hazards," he said.
Rosie Newman, information supervisor for the office of student records in Strong, said that people in her office were bothered by the
Johnston said the space between the air conditioner and the side of the window probably created a "mini cave" — a nook that sheltered the pigeons from the rain and possibly the rain and snow.
"Nesting on a fully exposed window ledge would be like nesting on the edge of a cliff," he said. "The pigeons would not be attracted to a nesting site that offered no protection from the elements."
Johnston said the nooks and crannies of campus buildings also afforded protection from most predators. A pigeon's natural predators, he said, were opossums, rats and raccoons.
Pigeons, Johnston said, were not native to North America, but were brought by settlers from the British Isles to be used as a source of protein.
ATTENTION
Now taking applications for University Committees
Apply at the STUDENT SENATE OFFICE b105 Kansas Union 864-3710
Application deadline is Sept. 6,1985 at 5 p.m.
Paid for by the Student Activity Fee
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
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Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Cantina
2600 Iowa
843-4076
Interested LA&S graduate students should complete nomination forms available at the College Graduate Division 210-1 Strong Hall.
Filing deadline is 4:30pm Monday, Sept.9.
Wednesdays
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All LA&S graduate students are encouraged to become involved in LA&S governance.
Election will be held Sept. 11 and 12, 210-1 Strong Hall
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