lifestyles
THE FAMILY THAT STUDIES TOGETHER...
Three members of the Shrandt family will make graduation a family affair on May 14.
Bill Schrandt, center, with his children Jody and Stephanie. The three family members, who are graduating from the University of Kansas, will be walking down the Hill May 14.
By Polina Sukonik Special to the Kansan
Jeffrey M. Schiffman / SPECIAL TO THE KANSAN
On a typical Monday evening, the Schrandt family gathers for the weekly ritual: cheese pizza and "Melrose Place." The show is a rumor, but it's no problem. They entertain each other by discussing sports
movies, classes and their coming graduation. Graduation?
For the Schrandts, graduation truly will be a family affair. On May 14, Bill, 50, an industrial engineering student; Jody, 23, an MBA candidate and Stephanie, 25, a law-school candidate, might be the first family to graduate from the University of Kansas at the same time.
They will, along with thousands of their peers,
take that memorable stroll down Mount Oread.
But these soon-to-be graduates are not the only family members that share educational goals at KU. Betty, 50, a former KU graduate, is working toward her master's in educational counseling, and another daughter and son-in-law also are studying for their master's at the KU Regents Center.
Education has played an important and vital role in the Schrand household. "I have always just assumed that my sisters and I would go on to college," Jody said. "In my family, it was never even a question."
And no, they don't receive a family discount for KU tuition.
"I'm very proud of my children," said Bill, clad in a "Gamma Phi Dad" sweatshirt. "They worked hard to put themselves through school."
But there is a defector in the family.
Daughter Suzanne is a freshman at Kansas State University.
"She just had to do that animal science thing, I guess," said Jody, a loyal KU fan.
A family that studies together plays together. At the last KU-KState basketball game, the Schrands were at a K-State bar cheering both the Jayhawks and the Wildcats. Betty and Bill, a former K-State graduate, stayed neutral. The two wore painted tattoos on each cheek, one Jayhawk and one Wildcat. "Traitors," Stephanie
getting here.
The Schrandt enjoy the Lawrence bar scene when they can root for the Jay-hawks.
"We go to Henry T's and the Yacht Club often during games," Jody said. "Mom gets really into it."
But KU life is not just fun and games. There are some academics involved also.
"I cannot believe that people I graduated with actually got along without computers," Bill said. "Back in the '60s we had to use slide rules instead of spreadsheet programs. I just don't know how
Jody and Stephanie help their parents learn how to do their research on computer databases such as LEXUS and NEXUS. In their undergraduate years, Bill and Betty did not have the convenience of having computers.
"The best part of my college experience is the association with the youth," he said. "I'll miss
May 14 is going to be hectic. We have to go to Stephanie's law school hooding, then Dad's special engineering ceremony, then
people survived college without computer programs. I don't know how they could have done
Bill loves KU and the positive experiences he is
my party."
Jody Schrandt One of three graduating Schrandst
that a lot when I graduate. I appreciate the warm reception that I got from young peers. They accept me for who I am, and when we work on our projects we share resources." Bill and his classmates trade Bill's real world experience f
Bill and his classmates trade Bill's real world experience for their computer knowledge.
"It's a great trade," Bill said. Because of their graduate status, Jody and Stephanie get much better parking lots than their lowly undergraduate dad.
"I can't believe that I, their father, have a worse parking space than my children," he said.
Stephanie and Jody love having their parents on campus.
colonel uniform and now, instead of green canouflage clothes, he wears cool sweatshirts, Levi jeans and hikking boots. What a change."
"It's really weird because Dad, a former Army colonel, now dresses cool," Stephanie said. "I am used to seeing Dad in his army
But having a brother on campus is the most
convenient for Stephanie, who has been at KU long enough to accumulate a large number of residences in Lawrence.
Jody has helped her move 13 times.
And with the more time one spends on campus, the more one's vocabulary tends to change
"Iheard Dad say, "That guy's a dork," Jody said.
"He never used to say that."
Now, the graduation announcements have been sent. Caps and gowns have been purchased. And the Schrandtis eagerly are anticipating their big day. Relatives are flying in from as far as Michigan to witness the big day.
Between classes, Jody runs into his father in the cafeteria. "Dad is surrounded by people my age," Jody said. "They call him Bill, and he introduces them to me as his friends."
"May 14 is going to be hectic." Jody said. "We have to go to Steph's law school hooding, then Dad's special engineering ceremony, then my party."
The MBAs $\Pi$ are not having a special ceremony this year.
After graduation, each will go their separate ways. Stephanie accepted a job offer at a law firm in California; Jody, an offer in St. Louis; and BIII will remain in Lansing, where he and Betty reside. He hopes to be a city or county engineer.
But distance will not keep the Schrandts from losing touch.
"We expect the phone bills and those frequent riders to rack up," Jody said.
Poetic tour takes unusual view
By Lulsa Flores
Kansan staff writer
Mount Oread will become an Acropolis tomorrow when a professor leads a group of students around campus.
The name of the event is "Perspectives on the Monuments of Mount Oread." It is a Stop-Day walking tour to the University of Kansas led by Theodore Johnson Jr., professor of French.
The tour will start at 9 a.m. at 14th Street and Jayhawk Boulevard. The event, which is open to all students, is free and will last until 5 p.m.
Their purpose? Philosophy and other matters — just as Socrates in his peripatetic dialogues.
"If one transposes Mount Oread into the abstract idea of an Acropolis, one becomes aware of certain sweetness and grace, and to that end I organize every spring on Stop Day a marathon walking tour of the campus," Johnson said.
He said one purpose of the tour was to bring people to transpose the sights into metaphors and to read ideas into seemingly disparate elements. He said he would not talk about buildings as buildings, but buildings as metaphors and ideas.
"Over a year ago two banners were placed over two windows of the facade of Dyche Hall," he said. "The banners hide figures of the moon and the sun and blocks a great deal of the perception of the facade as a whole."
Another reason for the tour was to shed light on some of the problems with the campus today.
"The glass windows, with the images of the moon and sun, which have the concept of time, are blocked off," he said. "I think that they wanted to make it colorful for children, but it is awful and intellectually wrong. It is not right, and is so frightening that if they do this to this building they can do it to others."
Johnson's thesis related the writings of French author Marcel Proust to painting. He also wrote a minor thesis in art history on allegory and symbols on the work of the Dutch painter Vermeer.
Johnson has been complaining about this problem for a year, but the banners have remained. "The poetry of the facade is not understood," he said.
"Ialways worked on art history," Johnson said. In his classes, Johnson discusses composition in sculpture, painting and music.
"We look at how things are put and their inter-relations," he said.
Johnson uses the campus buildings to illustrate aspects of the subjects he teaches.
"I bring people to look deeply and discover the integrity of the minds who conceived and executed those works," he said.
Junko Sawamura, Wichita senior and one of Johnson's students, said that Johnson pulls out insights from everybody.
"He gets us to travel through time from Egypt to the present time and also the future," Sawamura said. "We get to see things from Rome, Greece, France and even from the moon just being on campus. He makes the statues talk and move."
The concept of the seven liberal arts goes back to the Middle Ages. The liberal arts were divided into the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium was composed of grammar, rhetoric and dialectics. The quadrivium was composed of geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy.
"This 12th-century structure is useful for the students to deal with iconography and the interrelation with the seven liberal arts," Johnson said.
Johnson also uses the buildings in terms of architecture. His students study Dyce Hall, which is based on the Roman-style St. Tropine cathedral in Arles, France.
Johnson said that the campus buildings gave a sense of time to people, but people sometimes went by without noticing the buildings.
For example, the stones that compose the Natural History Museum are more than several hundred million years old, and fossils can be seen in the stones, giving a perspective of a sense of time to the viewer, he said.
Johnson said that another important building on campus was Twente Hall, with the sculpture of St. George and the Dragon. He said that the building symbolized the role of the faculty and students at the University.
"George, which in Greek conveys the idea of Geo or Earth, and the statue of the pioneer digging into the ground, in front of Blake Hall, set into relief the intellectual character of our campus and our role, as faculty and students, to cultivate our ideas," he said.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SCIENCE FAIR
The New York Times reported in January that some dermatologists, who are dissatisfied with injecting collagen to ease forehead wrinkles, have turned to a solution of the toxin that causes the botulism food poisoning. The treatment, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, paralyzes the muscles that pull down the eyebrows, easing the wrinkles. And in tests at a Palm Springs, Calif., cancer center, doctors reported in December that a derivative of mistletoe has been their most effective treatment in cases of advanced lung cancer.
A report in a January issue of The New England
Medicine revealed that the cause of a woman's chronic heel pain was an accumulation of dog
A study in the November issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology evaluated females in four body positions to find out which was the most effective in keeping them from wetting their pants. Findings: It is much better to cross your legs, and more effective to stand upright while doing it than to be bent at the waist.
A medical journal reported in September that a 28-year-old man had been saved from certain death in his fall from a seven-story building recently in Toronto — because he landed on a signpost and was impaled. The steel post pierced his back and protruded about six inches out of his chest near the armpit. The man received "minimal injuries," according to doctors, and suffered no permanent impairments.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
embedded in the skin over the Achilles tendon, produced by years of her rubbing her Scottish terrier with her bare heel.
hairs
In March, a man with a gun burst into a Columbia, Tenn., building that formerly housed the First Citizens Bank and rushed up to what were formerly the tellers' counters. However, the bank had relocated six months earlier, and the building now houses an insurance company, two of whose employees were on duty. Asked the man, "Is this not a bank anymore?" He managed to escape after robbing the two women.
In New Jersey, James J. Downes, 29, was arrested for attempted robbery of the Sussex County State Bank in Vernon Township after he drew attention to himself by banging on the bank's doors while wearing a mask, a few minutes after the bank had closed for the day on April 1.