4A NEWS
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THE UNIVERSITY OF DALY KANSAS
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2006
TRANSPORTATION
Anna Gonzales, Topeka senior, commutes to campus from Topeka three times per week. She and her husband live in Topeka because his job is there.
Mindy Ricketts/KANSAN
Commuting students forced to overcome many challenges
BY MATT ELDER
While living at home may seem like a good idea and a way to save a little extra money, there are many unexpected obstacles that can make the experience frustrating.
"I have to get my butt up by six just to get into Lawrence, to make the Park and Ride bus and be at class by 8," said Shelby Evins, Olathe junior.
But Evins' struggle with her morning commute is only one of her transportation problems. On Mondays and Wednesdays, she makes the 30-mile drive into Lawrence for one 50-minute class.
"I actually spend more time
going to and from Lawrence than in Lawrence," Evins said. "It's just ridiculous."
After being told that the yellow parking zones were persistently full throughout the semester, Evins bought a Park and Ride pass from the parking department. She said that getting to campus in the morning was the easy part, but returning to her car after classes often took longer.
Donna Hultine, director of parking and transit, said that there were four buses on the route in the morning and that timing usually varied but the average was a pick-up every eight minutes. She said there were fewer buses in the afternoon.
Evins has found that while she had originally planned to save money this semester by living at home with her parents, the commute was dipping into her savings more than she thought it would. Even with the recent decline in gas prices, she said she was tired of having to fill her gas tank.
"I find myself going back to Lawrence a lot more than I had thought I would, like for group projects," she said. "If my partners are in Lawrence, that's where we meet and I've got to drive back again for just an hour or so."
However, Evins does get excited about drops in gas prices. She said she always paid close attention to
As a way to help students save on gas prices, the KU parking department offers students access to a carpooling program called Rideshare Service. Commuters can sign up at parking.ku.edu.
which specific filling stations had the lowest prices at the time.
Matt Say, De Soto senior, said the real burden of living outside of Lawrence was the afternoon crowd during his commute home. He said that he left campus at four or five oclock each day, but that his drive home often took considerably longer than his drive to campus.
"The morning doesn't even compare to the afternoon," Say said. "Traffic is a whole lot heavier in the afternoon."
BY DARLA SLIPKE
Musicians use publicity, concerts for philanthropy
Pomeroy, a Kansas City, Mo. band, is using its music to raise awareness about global issues and to bring entertainment to soldiers abroad.
》 PROFILE
Pomeroy will perform a benefit concert for Amnesty International at 7 p.m. Thursday at Liberty Hall. All proceeds go to aid relief efforts in Darfur, Sudan.
Ron Francisco, professor of political science and former adviser to the KU Amnesty International group, said the situation in Sudan was "horrendous" and students should attend the concert if they cared about stopping genocide.
Ray Hodgson, Manhattan sophomore and officer of the Amnesty International group at the University of Kansas, said the concert was a way to make people aware of the genocide in Sudan. He said he hoped that once they learned more, they would want to take action.
Jeff Paleschek, who organized the event, said the purpose of the concert was to raise awareness as well as money. He said Pomeroy deserved credit for its generosity and willingness to help.
Pomeroy is using its music to reach out in other ways as well.
After the concert, the group will leave to perform for U.S. military troops in 10 Southwest Asian and Middle Eastern countries. The band will spend 25 days visiting military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. The five band members said this was their opportunity to serve their country as musicians.
This will not be the first time the band has traveled abroad to perform for troops.
The band spent several weeks overseas on an Armed Forces Entertainment tour in September 2004. Matt Marron, guitarist and vocalist for the group, said the band members were ready to go back "almost immediately" upon returning home.
Marron and vocalist/percussionist David Fairbanks said the audiences on the bases were the most appreciative they had ever played for.
"For us it was never a question of if we would go back, but when," Marron said.
"We can play a sell-out crowd here in the states and it probably wouldn't feel as good as playing for 50 marines in the middle of Afghanistan," Fairbanks said.
Fairbanks said the band stayed in huts and barracks with the soldiers and wore helmets and bulletproof vests while traveling with the troops. One night, the base they were staying at in Bagram, Afghanistan, was attacked by rockets.
Despite the potential dangers, Fairbanks said the rewards outweighed the risks. The band met numerous people overseas who later attended concerts back in the United States. The band members also brought home a video they shot of a Kansas City man saying hello to his family and gave it to the family members. Fairbanks and the other band members were eager to bring troops a piece of home.
"If there's any way we can incorporate art and our craft to help others, it's a beautiful thing," he said.
REDEDICATION
Kansan staff writer Darla Slipke can be contacted at dslipke@kansan.com.
Edited by Aly Barland
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kansas celebrates Pike despite history mixup
and raise the American flag. Years later, many Kansans believed that was the first time a U.S. flag was flown in the state.
People have known since the 1930s that Pike actually met with the tribal council of Pawnees in what is now Nebraska. But those who are planning the celebration and rededication of a monument to Pike say the event still was important in Kansas history and should be remembered.
REPUBLIC — A party is planned Saturday to note the bicentennial of a historic meeting in Republic County between explorer Zebulon Pike and Pawnee Indians — and celebrants aren't letting the small detail that the visit happened somewhere else get in the way.
He persuaded village leaders to
power the Spanish flag at the site
For many years, people believed that Pike arranged a grand council at the tribal village of the Pawnee Indians near Republic in September 1806. Pike's mission was to negotiate a peaceful agreement with tribes and establish United States dominance over the native people.
So, in September 1901, a 26-foot-tall granite monument was built in Republic County
"Pike was a lousy mapmaker; all his maps are wrong. There was no other data to tell where Pike would have been until the early 1930s, when the site in Nebraska was found."
TOM WITTY
Retired archaeologist
to honor Pike, who was the first American soldier to lead a party of explorers through the territory that became Kansas. Pike is best known today as the founder of Pike's Peak in Colorado.
In the 1930s, evidence was discovered that the tribal council meeting at a village between the Nebraska towns of Guide Rock and Red Cloud.
But that doesn't mean Kansans shouldn't celebrate the meeting, said Richard Gould, administrator of the Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site in Republic.
Historians say Pike traveled into Kansas, north of present-day Fort Scott, on Sept. 3, 1806. The expedition moved through what is now Dickinson, Saline, Ottawa and Cloud counties, heading for the Pawnee villages near the Kansas-Nebraska border. The group apparently crossed into Nebraska around Sept. 25 and stopped at a Pawene village near the Republican River, where the historic council occurred.
Part of the confusion over the location of the meeting can be blamed on Pike, said Toni Witty, retired Kansas state archaeologist.
"It may not tell an accurate story, but the monument is the reason this site was saved and preserved and the museum was built," he said. "Pike was one of the first American explorers to go through Kansas, and that's worth celebrating."
The centerpiece of the celebration will be the rededication of the Pike monument, which has been restored after being damaged by a tornado in May 2004.
"Pike was a lousy mapmaker; all his maps are wrong," said Witty, who lives in Topeka and was instrumental in the building of the Pawnee Indian Museum in 1965. "There was no other data to tell
Saturday's party won't be as big as the original unveiling of the monument in September 1901, when more than 10,000 people, including the governor and two state senators, attended, Gould said. Even bigger crowds attended a four-day event in 1906 celebrating the centennial of Pike's visit, he said.
where Pike would have been until the early 1930s, when the site in Nebraska was found."
Despite Pike's limited time in Kansas, Gould said the explorer always will be an important part of history.
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