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Volume 128 Issue 22
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Kansan.com | The student voice since 1904
Title IX Roundtable discusses effectiveness
ALLISON KITE
@Allie Kite
Effectiveness and organization were the primary concerns discussed at the Title IX Roundtable's meeting Monday morning.
The Title IX committee provides a space for students, faculty and staff to meet and discuss issues on campus, particularly those related to sexual assault, which has gained considerable attention from students and administration in recent weeks.
Emma Halling, a senior from
Elkhart, Ind., who sits on both the Title IX committee and the chancellor's sexual assault task force, voiced concerns about the body's effectiveness in changing policy. She said she was frustrated that a proposition for mandatory sexual assault training was "shut down" in the Roundtable last semester.
Halling said she welcomed the idea of formalization, but pointed out the Roundtable doesn't explicitly make policy or provide funding. She said those decisions would still only be advisory to other organizations.
"It wasn't until the same suggestions that we were making here were acknowledged by the chancellor that these things were brought into effect," Halling said. "That has been extraordinarily frustrat-
pus, pending approval. McQueeny said the survey will
ing for me."
Jane McQueeny, executive director for the Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access, suggested more formalized proceedings to increase effectiveness.
The Roundtable will soon be releasing a climate survey about sexual assault on cam-
it wasn't until the same suggestions that we were making here were acknowledged by the chancellor that these things were brought into effect."
EMMA HALLING Senior from Elkhart, Ind.
drawn from the government's initiative Not Alone, a national resource for information about sexual assaults on college campuses.
Student Body Vice President Miranda Wagner, a senior from Shawnee, and Student Senate Chief of Staff Mitchell Cota, a senior from Overland Park, and Halling will draft by-laws and membership requirements before the group's next meeting, Halling said. A date has not yet been set for the next meeting.
include 22 questions, many
Edited by Rob Pyatt
BROOK BARNES/KANSAN
A student gets his blood drawn Monday. The University partnered with the American Red Cross and Community Blood Center to host this year's blood drive. Last year, the American Red Cross collected 331 pints of blood from KU students. The Blood Center will be collecting blood for local hospitals.
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
2 CANDIDATE DEBATE
U. S. House candidates discuss national security and healthcare
2 GREEN ROOF West Campus gets green roof
4 POLITICAL SMOKESCREEN
"The administration does not care about us. They care about getting money from donors."
MORGAN SMITH
5 ALCHEMY EXPANSION Alchemy Coffee adds bakery
6 NATIONAL HONOR
University alumna named MacArthur Fellow
8 FOOTBALL FILM REVIEW
A look back at Kansas' 23-0 loss to Texas on Saturday
8 DAILY DEBATE
Will the Royals win the World Series this year?
9 BIG 12 RANKINGS
Kansas falls to last place in conference after loss against Texas
9 MORNING BREW
The final score is the only statistic that matters
Anonymous couple donates 120 acres to University
PAIGE STINGLEY
@paigestingley
The University's 1000-acre campus got a little bit bigger recently when a couple from northeast Kansas donated 120 acres of land. The couple, who wishes to remain anonymous, also made a $2 million gift commitment that will create an endowed fund to be used to maintain and enhance the property, according to a summary by the Kansas Biological Survey, a research center at the University. The donations are future gifts and will not be given to the University until both of the donors are deceased.
The donors have made it clear they want their property to be used "for the purposes of education, research, and public enjoyment," according to the summary. The use of the land will be determined at a later date when the gift is received.
The property is rich with plants and animals, but more importantly, it is a "Grade A" prairie that harbors more than 130 native plant species, making it "one of the best remaining examples of native prairie in existence in northeast Kansas," according to the Kansas Biological Survey.
The property's use will be determined based on the specifics of the property and any future needs of the University community, said Ed Martinko, director of the Kansas Biological Survey.
Edited by Emily Brown
VISIT KANSAN.COM FOR DEVELOPMENTS ON THIS STORY
Weather phobia study merges climatology, psychology
MCKENNA HARFORD
@McKennaHarford
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Anxiety, increased heart rate and monitoring the TV are frequent symptoms of severe weather phobia. It can even go so far as changing schedules to avoid severe weather, or being unable to eat or sleep.
Mother-daughter researchers Karen Multon, a KU counseling psychology professor, and Jill Coleman, an associate professor of geology at Ball State University, examined how people experience severe weather phobia in a recent study, with the help of KU doctoral students Kaylee Newby and Cynthia Taylor.
"There hasn't been any empirical research since 2006, so we had the golden opportunity to follow up," Multon said. "We wanted to expand [previous research] to a national level of all ages."
Studying severe weather phobia allowed Multon and
Coleman to finally work together, which they had wanted to do for some time, because the topic combined both of their expertise.
The study consisted of using Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing marketplace owned by Amazon, to survey 298 people across the country, aged 19-75. The team analyzed the data and discovered that 4.7 percent of those surveyed self-reported having severe weather phobia.
"It's nice to see how [the study] is being utilized from both the climatology and psychology perspectives," Coleman said.
The study also found that people with more weather education were more likely to report symptoms of severe weather phobia.
"We predicted the opposite," Multon said. "Now we're thinking that people who are fearful to begin with are drawn to the courses."
Multon said she hopes this information, which expanded on the small amount of previous research done on severe weather phobia, will help find treatments and prevention methods.
"We want to develop targeted interventions to reduce the fear," Multon said. "It has an impact on somebody's life where they won't go out of the house five days ahead of a storm. That's a major problem."
A new research study looked at severe weather phobia and found that those who had more weather education were more likely to report symptoms of weather phobia.
"The research is primarily exploratory for future research and questions," Taylor said. "I'm very interested in understanding it in regional areas and communities and looking at how [severe weather phobia] is experienced and expressed."
JAMES HOYT/KANSAN
Taylor said she looks forward to continuing her study of severe weather phobia and its effects, especially in regional areas, as well as causes of the phobia.
Edited by Rob Pyatt
Index CLASSIFIEDS 8 CRYPTOQUIPS 6 SPORTS 10 CROSSWORD 6 OPINION 4 SUDOKU 6
All contents, unless stated otherwise, © 2014 The University Daily Kansan
To donate blood.
Today's Weather
H1: 85
L0: 64
T-storms with a 30 percent chance of rain. Wind S at 15 mph.
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