THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28. 2011
PAGE 3
CAMPUS
University student named as Rhodes scholar
IAN CUMMINGS
icummings@kansan.com
The first time Kelsey Murrell stepped off of a bus at the University of Oxford, she knew it was where she wanted to be.
That was more than a year ago, when Murrell, a senior from Kearney, Mo., visited the university on a study abroad trip. It was a world away from Kearney, where she attended high school and waited tables at Outlaws Barbecue, a restaurant owned by her parents. Now Murrell is the University's 26th Rhodes Scholar, and she will receive funding to attend Oxford for at least a year. She said her family and small-town up-bringing were a major influence on her success.
"Dad taught me if I want something, to work for it and get it myself." Murrell said.
Murrell learned that she won the award on Nov. 19, after an interview in St. Louis. Rhodes scholarships are awarded to 32 students annually. The University has sent 26 students, including Murrell, to Rhodes Scholarships more than any other university in Kansas.
Murrell is an English literature and creative writing major, and she made her first trip to Oxford as part of a study abroad course
with her adviser, Mary Klayder.
"I applied because of her." Murrell said. "She really encouraged me to consider it."
Klayder, a professor of English and University Honors lecturer, taught Murrell as freshman in a creative writing course and has been her adviser through study abroad courses in Costa Rica, London and Oxford.
"Kelsey is really determined," Klayder said. "She's tenacious in learning. When she doesn't know something, she talks to people and finds out how to learn it."
Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little with Kelsey Murrell, a senior from Kearney, Mo. and the University's 26th Rhodes Scholar.
Marta Caminero-Santangelo, chair of the English department, said one key to Murrell's success has been her ability to handle several responsibilities at once. In addition to her coursework, Murrell has been a resident assistant at McCollum Hall and a student senator. She has also been active with the Center for Community Outreach and she now works two jobs, as an office assistant at the Office of Study Abroad and a tutor at the Academic Achievement and Access Center. She received an undergraduate research award for her studies in immigration narratives and is working on a senior honors thesis on refugee stories.
Murrell said she studied refugees because their situation
— not having a safe place to call their own — was compelling to her as a student of society and a storyteller.
"Refugee problems need good policy based on research and facts and economic data," she said. "But also listen to their stories."
Murrell is a playwright and founder of the Contemporary Alternative Student Theatre, an organization of writers and performers on campus. She was one of only 10 students admitted to the Dean's Scholars Program in the fall of 2010 and was one of 20 University sophomores chosen for the University Scholars Program.
"With amazingly little sleep, and probably lots of caffeine, she does lots and lots of things very well," Caminero-Santangelo said. "She's pretty amazing at taking on more than most human beings."
CHUCK FRANCE/UNIVERSITY RELATION
Chris Wiles, assistant director of the University Honors Program, worked with Murrell in preparing for the Rhodes applications, and said she deserved all of the credit for her success. Applying for the scholarship is a year-long process that involves preparatory classes and competition with some of the best students in the country.
"She's taken every opportunity we've ever given her," Wiles said. "She succeeded because she
was well prepared. This is about her winning it, not a committee drawing it up and telling her what to do. She took it in her hands."
Murrell said she will pursue two graduate degrees at Oxford, studying refugee migration patterns and public policy.
In the future, she hopes to return to the United States to pursue a doctorate in transnational literature, teach and write plays. For now, she is preparing for Oxford.
"I definitely feel like it'll be a challenge and it'll be difficult," she said. "But I'm excited about that challenge."
Edited by Laura Nightengale
RELIGION
Catholics adjust to new translation of prayers for Mass
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CLAYTON, N.C. — English-speaking Roman Catholics who have regularly attended Mass for years found themselves in an unfamiliar position Sunday, needing printed cards or sheets of paper to follow along with a ritual many have known since childhood.
"I don't think I said it the right way once," said Matthew Hoover, who attends St. Ann Catholic Church in Clayton, a growing town on the edge of the Raleigh suburbs. "I kept forgetting, and saying the old words."
The Mass itself — the central ritual of the Catholic faith — hasn't changed, but the English translation has, in the largest shakeup to the everyday faith of believers since the upheavals that followed the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. A years-long process of revision and negotiation led to an updated version of the Roman Missal, the text of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass, which originally was written in Latin. The new translation was rolled out across the English-speaking Catholic world on Sunday after months of preparation.
Mickey Mattox, a professor at Milwaukee's Marquette University, said he was happy with the idea that the bishops wanted the translations as accurate as possible.
Adapting to the changes "was a lot less difficult than I thought it might be," said Mattox, 55, adding, "even though probably all of us are going to end up holding our worship folders for a few weeks until we memorize all the new language."
The Rev. George Witt, pastor of the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on New York's Park Avenue, started the 11 a.m. Mass by noting Sunday was not only the first day of Advent, but also the first day to use the new Missal. He directed parishioners to a pamphlet inserted into the back of the now-outdated hymnal that spelled out the new wording. A notable number of worshippers stumbled after the priest said, "Peace be with you." The new response is "And with your spirit" instead of "And also with you." But many others confidently gave the right response.
"Consubstantial? What is that word?" McCormack said, referring to a term in the retranslated Nicene Creed that replaces language calling Jesus "one in being with the Father."
Kathleen McCormack, a church volunteer and former school teacher, said she didn't like the new translation and didn't understand why the church needed a translation closer to Latin.
But she saw a cautionary tale in the many Catholics she saw distance themselves from the church over changes made after the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
"It's not shaking my church experience," said McCormack, as she handed out church bulletins. "You have the spirit between you and God and the words are insignificant."
Most of the changes are actually to prayers recited by the priest, but some of the changes for prayers spoken or sung by the congregation revise familiar words that for some people are spoken almost automatically after years of churchgoing.
Along with the new response and unfamiliar words, the affirmation "We believe" has been replaced with "I believe" in the Nicene Creed. Some of the language seems more formal or poetic: the word "cup" has become "chalice".
"It's more British in some ways," said Monsignor Michael Clay, pastor of St. Ann. "But this is the first time that every English-speaking country in the world will be using the same translation of the Mass."
Clay likes the new translation, finding it closer to the Latin text that is still the church's official language. But some priests and
parishioners have been less enthusiastic, criticizing the new version as too ponderous or distant, and in some cases circulating petitions asking for a delay in introducing the new missal.
Maribeth Lynch, 51, a publisher from the Milwaukee suburb of Elm Grove, said she was "distraught" over the changes and would refuse to "learn the damn prayers."
"It's ridiculous. I've been a Catholic for 50 years, and why would they make such stupid changes? They're word changes. They're semantics," she said.
"It's confusion. All it's doing is causing confusion," she said. "You want to go to church and be confused?"
The roots of the new translation go back to that epocal council held at the Vatican in the 1960s, which allowed Mass in languages other than Latin. An English-language missal was produced by 1973.
more familiar vernacular speech. Numerous revisions and bishops' meetings eventually produced agreement on the translation being used Sunday.
Parishes and dioceses around the country have spent months trying to prepare Catholics for the change. Descriptions of the new translation have been printed in weekly bulletins, seminars have been held and, since Labor Day, many parishes have been gradually introducing the new translation piece by piece, starting with the parts of the liturgy that are sung.
but that was intended to be temporary while improvements were made.
In 2001, the Vatican office that oversees worship issued a directive requiring translation of the English missal that would be closer to the Latin rather than to
Most of those activities are for the benefit of the average Catholic, but it's priests who have more new material to master.
“It's ridiculous. I've been a Catholic for 50 years, and why would they make such a stupid changes? They're word changes. They're semantics."
"I've had a new missal in my hands for about three weeks now, and I've been literally practicing the prayers," Clay said. "I've been doing this now for 31 years, and a lot of these prayers I actually know by memory. I have to make sure my brain isn't getting ahead of my mouth."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Father Michael Ssentfuma, a visiting priest from Uganda, conducts the Catholic Mass Nov. 27 at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Montgomery, Ala. Catholics nationwide began using a new translation of the Roman Missal on Nov. 27.