6A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY OF BANGKOK
MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2006
HEALTH
Freshmen avoid college pounds Universities help students attain healthier lifestyles
BY STEVE HARTSOE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DURHAM, N.C. — Sunny Dawson ran two miles every other day when she started her freshman year at the University of Southern California. But the lure of the cafeteria near her dorm became too much to resist.
"Everyone I know went crazy, 'Oh my God, pizza. Oh my God, ice cream,'" she said. Dawson soon stopped running and "started pilling up the food in the cafeteria."
By Christmas break, the 5-foot-10 native of Haleiwa, Hawaii, had gained 10 pounds.
"I realized I don't have to be a victim of this and started making better choices," she said. "I ate a lot of salads and cut out sodas altogether. By spring break I was normal again. I was stoked."
As high school graduates start college this month and next, universities are offering a range of tools to help them avoid Dawson's mistake. While experts say the so-called "Freshman 15" is usually only 5 to 7 pounds, it's a common experience for many college newcomers faced with unlimited cafeteria food, late-night pizza binges and snacking that comes with irregular student schedules.
"The patterns and the habits that students get into in the first two to three months of school is what
tends to carry them through the rest of their time on campus," said Jen Ketterly, nutrition and fitness coordinator for campus health services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
At nearby Duke University, the private college of about 6,000 undergraduates offers an interactive nutrition workshop for freshmen with eating problems. It includes tips for quick, healthy meals in the dorm, and how to eat the right way in an all-you-can eat dining hall.
"A lot of kids really don't have a clue of what they're not supposed to eat and what constitutes a healthy diet," says Jenny Favret, the nutrition manager at Duke's Eating Disorders Program.
The problem isn't always weight gain: Some new students lose weight because they're no longer getting three meals a day from Mom and Dad.
"Often times students have a very difficult schedule. They don't have enough time to eat (properly) so they eat a lot of snacks," said Joshua Solano, 20, of Florida, who'll be a junior at Duke this year. "I actually lost a little weight from my irregular eating habits."
Campus cafeterias have improved their menus over the years and now offer more healthy choices, such as salad bars, said Kim Dude, director of the Wellness Resource Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
"Then the issue is how to educate students on how to make the right choice," she said. At Missouri, students are trained to make presentations to their peers at residence halls, fraternities and sororites on eating healthy, handling stress, exercising and generally leading a healthy lifestyle, she said.
Social pressures also often intensify at college, where students have more opportunity to compare themselves with each other because they spend so much time together, officials at several schools said. The super-fit bodies that saturate TV shows and commercials can exacerbate such problems.
At Southern Cal, there are seminars for freshmen taught by USC professors that deal with messages that can lead to damaging self-images. One such class — "Impossible Bodies: Plastic Surgery as a New Social Problem" — explores the relationship between viewing plastic surgery reality shows to dissatisfaction over a particular body part.
Dawson, a 19-year-old business major entering her sophomore year, will lead a program for about 65 of her fellow dorm residents — mostly freshmen — on making healthy living choices. It will include exercising together and tips on healthy eating, she said.
"A lot of freshmen," she said, "just don't know what they're getting into right now."
Completely compatible."
BID DAY (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Both prospective and active chapter members agree on the success of formal recruitment.
Leigh Radcliff, Olateh senior and active member of Kappa Delta, 1602 High Drive, said the week-long process solidifies the chapter's decisions during recruitment week.
"We had great girls that will benefit in and with the house," she said. "It's definitely an advantage that the girls had to be open-minded by trying every individual house."
before boarding buses to celebrate at the individual houses.
After receiving bids, the women were welcomed outside the Kansas Union with congratulatory signs and balloons from their new sisters
Kansan staff writer Matt Elder can be contacted at melder@kansan. com.
Edited by Kristen Jarboe
CRIME
Missouri man admits past crimes Failed carjacking leads to man's confession of five-year-old murders
BY HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DREXEL, Mo. — A rural Drexel man was charged Sunday with one count of murder as investigators scoured a rural plot of land where they think up to seven people may have been killed.
"He can say that he killed 50, but we have to prove that he actually did," Stocking said.
Michael Lee Shaver Jr., 33, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action related
Shaver and another man, Nathan Wasmer, 27, of Peculiar, were traveling at a high rate of speed Friday when Shaver lost control of his vehicle and wrecked, Stocking said. He said the two men tried to carjack a witness, but fled after they couldn't get into the woman's vehicle.
Cass County
Sheriff's Capt.
Chuck Stocking
to a killing that occurred in the fall of 2001. Officials said Shaver told investigators he has killed seven people on the property, all of whom he met through narcotics transactions.
The witness
said Shaver, who was arrested Friday after a failed carjacking, might have been exaggerating about the killings.
CAPT. CHUCK STOCKING Cass County Sheriff's Department
"It was a spontaneous statement he made while he was being interviewed for the carjacking"
cold a 911 dispatcher that the two men were armed with guns. The men were tracked down to a residential area, where Wasmer surrendered after an hour-long standoff and Shaver was found about a half-hour later hiding in a
nearby yard, officials said.
Stocking said Shaver told deputies as he was being placed into a patrol car that he had knowledge
of human remains on the property where he lives, and that he wanted to talk to someone about it.
"It was a spontaneous statement he made while he was being interviewed for the carjacking," said Stocking, who added that he was skeptical of the claims, at first.
"I didn't believe him," Stocking said. "I just flat didn't believe him."
Stocking said Shaver claimed that after he killed the men - all between the ages of 20 and 40 and from the Kansas City area - he dismembered the bodies, burned the parts in a fireplace in his bedroom, then used a hammer to crush large bones and skulls.
While being interviewed later Friday, Shaver told investigators that he had shot and killed seven people at his residence during drug transactions so he could take their money and drugs.
He said he then spread the bone fragments around his back yard.
A search warrant was issued Friday evening, and the first bone fragments were found Saturday.
JERICHO (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
Some North Lawrence business owners are open to the idea of allowing CBS and "Jericho" take over the town because it could bring business and notoriety.
Rick Renfo, owner of Johnny's Tavern, 401 N. Second St., thought the show would be great for North Lawrence and Lawrence as a whole because it would be a good time.
"Any excuse for a party is a good excuse," Renfro said.
The event may involve changing the name of the town to Jericho for a "week or so," said Stan Herd, a crop artist and Lawrence resident, who was sought out to create field art for the event. Herd is also responsible for bringing the event to North
Lawrence. His reasoning was that North Lawrence was its own little town separate from Lawrence with its own bars and restaurants. Also, the made-for-TV movie "The Day After" was filmed in Lawrence.
Herd is cutting the design in the sweet corn field at Bismarck Gardens, a vegetable farm at 1616 N. 1700 Road. The image will be a silhouette of a boy standing on the roof of a barn looking at a mushroom cloud in the distance, said Mary Ross, who owns the farm with her husband Pat. Jericho and CBS will be written in the field beneath the picture. The image will stretch 20 acres.
Ross said she and her husband were happy to let Herd, an old friend,
use their field because it had already been harvested and their business had closed for the season in the beginning of August.
Herd said there may be other promotional possibilities, but added that he hoped the event would entice "folks from the coasts" to return to Lawrence to shoot movies or television shows.
"There some consensus, if the show goes well it will bring some activity here," Herd said.
Kansan staff writer Jack Weinstein can be contacted at jweinstein@ kansan.com.
—Edited by Kristen Jarboe