THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 2008
NEWS
3A
» MULTICULTURALISM
University to hold conference
Marla Keown/KANSAN
Sharon Beak, Shawnee senior, stuffs packets put together by the Midwest Asian-American Student Union (MAASU) Monday evening at the Multicultural Resource Center, located next to the Kansas Union. MAASU is hosting this year's three-day spring conference that opens with a variety show today at 7:30 p.m. in the Kansas Union.
BY ANDREW WIEBE
awiebe@kansan.com
The Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center will host its first major regional conference this weekend when around 400 delegates gather for the Midwest Asian-American Students Union Spring Conference.
Delegates from 24 schools throughout the Midwest will come to the University of Kansas from March 28 to 30 to attend workshops, a career fair and banquets in the recently completed 7,000 square foot facility.
The University earned the right to host MAASU's major annual conference last year when its application was chosen. It is the first time the organization held its spring conference as far west as Kansas. Grant Huang, St. Louis senior and AASU external vice president, said the organization wanted to demonstrate to visiting delegates that Kansas was more than agriculture and flat land.
"We want to show them KU and that it's a great school," Huang said. "We want to get out there that KU is doing a lot of multicultural things in the Midwest."
After a multicultural variety show on Friday night, delegates will attend four workshops on Saturday on topics ranging from stereotypes in the media, interracial dating and voting in the Asian community. The workshops will be presented by a variety of speakers, including actor Parry Shen and local business people.
AASU President Susan Noh, Overland Park senior, said the group chose workshop topics that would apply to both daily life as an Asian-American and societal issues related to being a minority group.
"It's better to have stronger communities, more communication and have a bigger voice out there," Noh said. "So we do a lot of workshops that deal with leadership."
Noh said when she joined the organization four years ago as a freshman, she never could have imagined it would have the chance to host a conference of this magnitude.
She said the group had steadily grown from around 15 her freshman year to between 30 and 40 active members today. Officials at the MRC encouraged her group to apply for the event, but she never thought they would receive the bid, Noh said.
"This is almost like a dream," Noh said. "When we won, we were like 'what just happened?' We were so shocked."
MRC program director Santos Núñez said the conference showcased the hard work and dedication shown by MAASU members and other campus groups. The MRC will also host the 2009 Big 12 Black Student Leadership Conference.
"I think that this is a great opportunity to showcase the commitment that KU has to its student organizations," Núñez said.
Huang said hosting the conference is a fitting end to his college
career. He said the experience of attending his first MAASU spring conference in Ann Arbor, Mich., along with Noh as a freshman was the catalyst for his dedication to the group over the last four years.
The group of 12 paid their own way and despite arriving late because of car trouble, the conference left a lasting impression and began a commitment to improving the University's chapter.
"We met so many people, and it was the first time I realized there were so many Asian people in the Midwest," Huang said. "We talked about different kinds of issues that I never thought of and some stuff that I knew but I learned more about. Seeing how other Asian-Americans do things can really empower you and change things."
—Edited by Samuel Lamb
CRIME
Faculty, students victims of casual theft
BY FRANCESCA CHAMBERS fchambers@kansan.com
When Carol Holstead, professor of journalism, opened her office door after class in March 2006, she immediately noticed that her laptop was no longer sitting on top of her desk.
Holstead's door was closed, but not locked. She also had her class schedule and office hours posted on the door. Holstead said the theft was depressing because she worked with college students and did not want to think of theft as part of their value system.
"What happened to you growing up that makes you think it's okay to walk into someone's office and take their computer?" Holstead said.
Only 14 people reported having items stolen from their backpacks, classrooms or offices to the Public Safety Office this semester. However, Capt. Schuyler Bailey, Public Safety Office, said theft of unattended property was probably the biggest crime committed on campus, but he said the number of thefts that occurred was low compared with the number of students and buildings at the University. He also said the Public Safety Office had no way of accounting for thefts that occurred on campus that were not reported to the office.
Holstead said because she has worked in Stauffer-Flint Hall for 18 years, she started to feel like it was home and took for granted the security of her property. She also said it was a hassle to lock her door sometimes, for example, when she is going to the restroom, which is right across the hall from her office.
Bailey said most thieves at the University were opportunists. He said anyone who simply happened somewhere that items were left
unattended could be motivated to become a thief because of the ease in which unattended items could be stolen.
Bailey said most thefts are small items: iPods, books, calculators and unattended backpacks. He said most of those things look normal for a student to be carrying and so bystanders are not aware a theft has occurred.
Osburn said he expected that people would eventually have to use their KU IDs to gain entrance into buildings like the ID based system the residence halls began using this year.
Robert Osburn, a custodian at Haworth Hall, said many items are stolen from Haworth. He said it's because too many people have keys to get in out of the building. Osburn said many of the students who work in the labs have keys and if they lose their set, anyone could find the keys and enter the building.
Haworth is also supposed to be locked by the Public Safety Office, but Osburn said he knew of other ways thieves could get into the buildings without keys.
Osburn said many items have been stolen from janitors in Haworth before that were not reported like mop buckets. Recently a vacuum was reported stolen from a janitor's closet in Haworth, but it was later found.
Mark Gottschall, supervisor of the Journalism Resource Center, said he thought most of the people who stole items were not KU students. He said he thought they were homeless people.
"The security is just really lacking." Osburn said.
Recently Gottschall reported the theft of a projector from a Stauffer-Flint classroom. Gottschall said he thought the projector was stolen, not misplaced, because he
Bailey said the Public Safety Office locked most of the campus' the buildings at night, but sometimes students and other people were still working in those buildings at that time. He said those people often propped the doors open so they could get in and out when they were coming and going.
e-mailed all the professors who taught at the school and whoever stole the projector left the plug-in cord, signifying that they were in a hurry.
Holstead's computer was also returned. Holstead said the student who stole her computer did not wipe the computer's hard drive before he sold it on eBay. She said a week after her computer was stolen she was contacted by the man who had bought it and the computer was returned to her within the next week.
Gottschall said the door was locked and closed when he got there, but he suspected that the door had been left open the night before by the last class that was in the room. He said that was the only way someone could have stolen the projector from the room, unless the thief had keys to the room.
Gottschall said on the weekends he locked Stauffer-Flint, but on the weekdays it was locked at 10 p.m. and unlocked at 7 a.m. by the Public Safety Office.
"You'd think they would have gone ahead and unplugged the dang thing." Gottschall said.
Holstead has taken her class schedule off her door since her computer was stolen, but she said she felt at home enough in Stauffer-Flint to leave her door unlocked when she is not in her office.
"It's unlocked right now and the door is open," Holstead said.
— Edited by Jared Duncan
UNITED STUDENTS
Coalition seeks easier enrollment
BY BRENNA HAWLEY
bhawley@kansan.com
Implementing a new enrollment system and requiring professors to give grades out at midterms are part of an academic platform for the United Students senate coalition.
Adam McGonigle, Wichita sophomore and United Students presidential candidate, said the program the University of Kansas has now for enrollment was not student-friendly and was a bigger hassle than it needed to be.
He said that when students enrolled, they often needed a course catalog, a brochure of required classes for their major and scrap paper to figure out the classes they wanted and back-up classes.
"The amount of paper you
use to enroll is almost an environmental issue," McGonigle joked.
McGonigle wants to improve the system at Enroll & Pay with features like drag-and-drop class scheduling, prerequisites listed with classes and lists of classes required for majors and text-book prices. He said it wouldn't require a new program.
Michael Gillaspie, Ashland junior and vice presidential candidate for United Students, said he wanted to get rid of the paper shuffling during enrollment.
"We want to create a one-stop shop for enrollment," Gillaspie said.
McGonigle said he wanted to require professors to give out grades at midterms so students know where they stand in their class. He said many professors
Bill Crowe, president of University Senate, said that McGonigle would have to bring this proposal to University Senate, where it would go up for review.
already provided grades, but others didn't and students had to bother teachers to see their grades. He said there was no rule that required professors to hand out grades.
Crowe said he thought many professors would say that giving out grades was their decision on a case-by-case basis. He said that with thousands of courses and hundreds of instructors, they all had different ways of teaching their classes.
"Nothing isn't discussable," Crowe said.
Edited by Russell Davies
》 ENVIRONMENT
Sigrid Ekran, Will Steger, Sarah McNair-Landry, Ben Horton, Toby Thorleifsson and Eric McNair-Landry train in Ely, Minn., in October for a dogsled expedition. The expedition, to be held through the Arctic, strives to advocate for student activism regarding climate change.
Contributed photo by Will Steger Foundation
Students lead advocacy
BY MARY SORRICK msorrick@kansan.com
Climate change addressed in Arctic, on campus
A 1,400-mile dogsled expedition through the Arctic begins today to raise awareness of the importance of student activism in combating climate change.
Will Steger, an Arctic explorer and environmental advocate, will lead a team of five people ages 21 to 27 from Iqaluit, Canada, to Ellesmere Island, 480 miles from the North Pole.
The expedition, which will last through June, strives to raise awareness of endangered and collapsed ice shelves from polar melting in the arctic.
Steger held a conference call two weeks ago with university newspaper reporters across the country to emphasize the role of young people in the environmental movement.
"The primary objective for the upcoming expedition is to energize people," Steger said. "Especially people sitting on the bench."
Studie Red Corn, Shawnee senior, has a similar goal.
Red Corn, chair of the renewable energy subcommittee, said students had a responsibility to help fight global warming because they were more informed about the issues than most members of society.
"Students in college right now have the most knowledge and power to make a difference," he said. "This is the world we're getting handed and it's not as good as it could be."
Brian Sifton, Kansas City Mo., senior and president of KU Environs, said student involvement in environmental issues was also a matter of self-education.
"A lot of stuff talked about in Environs meetings isn't stuff talked about in the general public." Sifton said. "So it's important to get involved or you wouldn't hear those things otherwise."
One of KU Environ's current projects involves advocating that local dairies alert consumers to the presence of rBGH, a bovine growth hormone, with specially labeled milk bottles.
Other student-led environmental projects on campus include the Alternative Energy Society's biodiesel lab and Delta Force's advocacy that Chancellor Robert Hemenway sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Change Commitment, a pledge to reduce a campus' greenhouse gas emissions over time.
Sifton said projects such as these were significant because college students have different resources at their disposal while in school than they would have after graduation.
Steger, an environmental activist for 40 years, said the student-led environmentalist movement had broken from the social disengagement that often characterized people after the 1960s.
"There's an energy there of social interaction that I've never seen," he said. "It's not right or left, it's like the whole force of the middle."
For more information about Steger's Arctic expeditions, visit www.willsteger.com.
Edited by Jessica Sain-Baird
CRIME Authorities on alert after Interstate gunfire
CHARLOTTESVILLE.Va.—
Gunfire that struck several vehicles and injured two people along a stretch of mountain highway had motorists and police on edge Thursday in a region where memories of the deadly Beltway snipers still haven't faded.
Authorities were seeking at least two people suspected of firing shots the night before that hit two cars, a van, a tractor-trailer and an unoccupied dump truck on Interstate 64 West of Charlottesville. Two people were injured.
There were other differences from the sniper spree of nearly six years ago, including the fact that those attacks targeted people who were standing outside their cars.
Col. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent called the shooting "random firing."
Nevertheless, Flaherty conceded the 2002 attacks, in which 10 people were killed and three wounded in Maryland, the District of Columbia and northern Virginia, were on investigators'minds as they sought those behind Thursday's spree.
"It reminded us of a lot of emergencies we've had," said Flaherty, whose agency also dealt with last April's Virginia
Tech shootings.
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Police took a call from a driver whose vehicle was hit just after midnight. Three more occupied vehicles headed westbound were shot, one at an on-ramp at Ivy, the others at an overpass in the Afton area. An unoccupied Virginia Department of Transportation dump truck was targeted later, farther down the interstate.
The 20-mile stretch of I-64 between Waynesboro and Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, was closed for nearly six hours while police searched for suspects and evidence.
Associated Press