+
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
V
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20, 2014
PAGE 25A
+
CAMPUS
JAMES HOYT/KANSAN
"The Center of Everything" by Laura Moriarty is the 2014 KU Common Book. Each year, hundreds of submissions for the Common Book are sent in and judged until only one winner remains.
2014 KU Common Book chosen
LAUREN METZLER news@kansan.com
Hundreds of submissions were sent in, judged, and narrowed down until only one remained. It wasn't a sweepstakes competition but rather, the process for selecting the KU Common Book this year: "The Center of Everything" by Laura Moriarty.
As the third Common Book at the University, this is the first one to be authored by a University English professor.
"You can't get much more relevant than something that's set at KU," said Deborah Smith, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a member of the Common Book steering and selection committees.
In addition to uniting traditional students, the book will take on a whole new role in a new course at the University called the KU Academic Acceleration Program (AAP). This
the form of a specialized course this fall. Robert Hagen, an environmental studies lecturer, will teach the class which will be exclusively for foreign students to help them acclimate to the cultural landscape of Kansas.
"The difficulties any freshman has coping with a big school, away from home for the first time, then adding language challenges, cultural challenges, being thousands of miles away from anything familiar and it's really tough." Hagen said. "The notion of this AAP program is to accelerate their integration."
Another new aspect of the Common Book is the KU Common Book hashtag, which is an attempt to bring the book to the students via social media.
"We'll take participation however we can get it," Smith said. "Even casual participation is worth it because part of it is tied in with freshmen retention."
The Common Book, like many other programs for freshmen, is all about making new students feel like they belong at the University, Smith said.
Assigned or not, it is no secret that summer reading does not always get completed. This is something that Sarah Emery, a freshman from Fort Collins, Colo., discovered when she saw students requesting a summary of the book on the Class of 2018 Facebook page.
"It's pretty disappointing that people are using social media already to get answers on things that they didn't do,"
Emerv said.
Although relatable to Emery at this stage in her life, she had concerns about the book being accessible for the male population due to the fact that the two main characters are women. Despite concerns, Emery is an advocate for completing the assignment.
Going beyond simply reading the book, Emery was able to apply some of the book's themes to her upcoming experience at KU.
"I would tell somebody who didn't read it that they are really missing out," Emery said. "It truly is the first assignment that we get from KU and people are just being lazy by not reading it."
"One of the biggest lessons that I took away from the book was that [...] I won't have my parents around to push me to do certain things or remind me to get my paper written. It's all up to me."
— Edited by Madison Schultz
NATIONAL
Imported pups must be at least 6 months old
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Foreign dog breeders have gone unregulated for years, shipping puppies so young and so sick that one in four died before reaching a U.S. airport, animal welfare workers say.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a regulation Friday that, starting in 90 days, will require all puppies imported to the United States to be at least 6 months old, healthy, and up-to-date on vaccinations.
Census Bureau data show about 8,400 puppies a year were imported between 2009 and 2013. Because there were no regulations, however, the Humane Society of the United States believes the numbers were much higher, said Melanie Kahn, the society's director of puppy mill campaigns.
Many of the puppies came from mills in China and Eastern Europe, said Deborah Press, of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
This is the second major USDA effort regarding puppy mills in the last 12 months. In September, the agency enacted what is called the "retail rule": Breeders having four or more female breeding dogs have to be licensed if they are selling to consumers sight unseen on websites, in flea markets or in classifieds.
Both the Humane Society
and ASPCA said they routinely get calls from people who unwittingly bought a puppy mill dog from a foreign or U.S. breeder, only to have it die because its illnesses was too severe to overcome.
It has been hard to track the number of puppies that are imported, Kahn said, but, she said, "We have seen an increase just in the past few months based on calls from consumers who bought teacup puppies from Korea."
Importers have been sending puppies that are less than 8 weeks old to the U.S. in airliners' cargo holds, Kahn said.
"I imagine a 6-week-old puppy from Asia to the United States. We are talking about baby animals," she said. "They are delicate as it is. They could be shipping 100 dogs in the cargo hold. You only need one dog to have an illness and all of them could have it by the time the plane lands."
Under the new regulation, published in the Federal Register on Friday, violators can be fined up to $10,000.
The ban eliminates the easy access to market that foreign breeders have had for years, said Cori Menkin, senior director of the ASPCA puppy mills campaign.
But the fight isn't over, Kahn said: "We are not planning to fight any less than we already do. This means we are taking steps in the right direction."