THE OTHER TWO
Twenty-three students at KU who don't hail from the lower 48 states
by Anne Weltmer
For the 2006-2007 school year, 18,533 of 26,773 KU students came from Kansas; only 10 students came from Alaska and 13 from Hawaii. It make sense; Alaska is more than 2,700 miles away as the bird flies and Hawaii is more than 3,800.
The few students who made themmovefromwhatmanypeople
consider hot vacation spots to the landlocked Midwest came for many different reasons, but they have one thing in common: They all liked Lawrence and the University of Kansas enough to move thousands of miles away from their families, friends and everything they knew. Here are some of their stories.
NOVELTY ROAD-TRIPPER Rick Chase
Kahaluu, Hawaii, senior
Rick Chase followed a longer path than most to get to the University.After graduating from high school, he trained as an Emergency Medical Technician and worked until he was offered a semi-professional football job on his home island of Oahu.
Because of an injury, he was unable to continue playing and learned about the University from an alumnus who administered his physical therapy.
"I'd never see a Jayhawk or anything," he says.
After the alumnus convinced him that the University was a great place to be, he got a scholarship from the state of Hawaii that helped him pay tuition as long as he came
back during his trips home and taught Hawaiian language and culture to children.
Although Chase hates winter (besides the novelty of seeing his first snow), he likes the pretty campus and town, and met his fiance, who is also Hawaiian, at the University. He's finishing his degree in American Studies in 2008, but plans to stay a few more years and join the police force here.
Meanwhile, he can take road trips that he couldn't ever do in his home state. He celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans twice before Hurricane Katrina, and thoroughly enjoys being able to drive anywhere he wants to vacation instead of being forced to take a boat or plane.
He will go back to Hawaii eventually, he says; it's his home, and he misses surfing every day.
Matt Luthi bundled up during his childhood just outside of Anchorage.
CITY-LIFE SEEKER
Matt Luthi
Palmer, Alaska, junior
Matt Luthi was almost born on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait, delivered without a hospital or a doctor. Almost. Instead he was born in Pittsburg, Kan., where his grandparents live, because his mom wanted to give birth in a hospital.
Until he came to Lawrence, Luthi had never lived in a "big city." He lived on the northern coast of Alaska far above the Arctic Circle, where it's light out 24 hours a day, and in a small town outside of Anchorage.
His summer jobs have been high paying and a little out of the ordinary. He spent 35 days one summer counting every single
salmon that swam past him in the river with two co-workers for 24 hours a day from a watch tower. They were dropped food by air and took shifts counting. Sometimes, he says, he couldn't even leave the tower because bears were waiting at the bottom for him if he went down, and the water in the river was so cold he didn't bathe for the entire 35 days. It was worth the $18 per hour he made, though, he says.
"It's everybody's goal in Alaska to just get out of there," he says."Being down in the lower 48, there are just so many more opportunities."
He met his objective of getting out of the wilderness by coming to the University of Kansas after his freshman year at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. He'd been following KU sports for as long as
he could remember because his grandparents lived in Kansas.
He says he misses dog mushing, one of many sports he did in Alaska, and remembers his lead dog, Tony Danza, and the rest of the team named after Who's the Boss? characters. He's also hunted bear, moose, caribou, whale and seals, although he says he never could bring himself to kill a seal because of the "barbaric" method used to kill them, which involves dressing in seal fur and clubbing the animals to death.
Luthi is now in pre-pharmacy and says he has no idea what he'll do after he graduates. He says Alaska has its perks, like getting paid by the U.S.government to just to live there, but he's not homesick. For now, he says he's enjoying the bustling city life.
14> JAYPLAY 05.03.2007
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