Emporia State’s Theatre Department is ending the theater season with Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s psychological drama “HeddaGabler.” The play will run April 21-24 and April 27-May 1 in the Frederickson Theatre. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

“There aren’t a whole lot of bells and whistles and a whole lot of broad action, it’s a psychological play, and it demands maturity,” Jim Ryan, director of “Hedda” and professor of communications and theatre said.

Ryan said the play centers around one character, a woman by the name of HeddaGabler, played by Kelsey Fredericks, and the interactions other characters have with her. He said the play was a part of Ibsen’s realist phase in his writing and deals with the influence of heredity and environment on behavior.

“(She) was raised by a real strict, domineering, military man named General Gabbler and it’s sort of shaped the way she deals with other people. It’s her story and those individuals who come in contact with her. It’s her desire to have power over others and influence other people,” Ryan said.

Senior theatre major Scott Swezey plays Hedda’s husband, George Tessman. He said his character gets manipulated by his wife, but continues to see the good in her and not the bad. He said to show how his character was influenced by heredity, he worked with costar Brianne Simon, who plays his aunt, to mirror each other’s mannerisms and show congruity between the two characters.

“I guess a lot of what I did was I looked at his background and the thing that the director really wanted to stress with us is that these characters were products of their upbringing,” Swezey said.

Ryan said Ibsen is a truly important playwright in history and that Hedda is one of his most important plays. He said it is a challenge for actors and because it is in the Frederickson theatre, which is a smaller space, it demands subtle acting.

“It’s one of the truly important plays in the canon of dramatic literature, it’s a play that had a great affect on the development of dramatic literature and the techniques of writing realistic plays,” Ryan said.

Senior theatre major Lindsay Roland, who plays TheaElvstead, said the play is not very plot driven, so it’s easy for the audience to get caught up in the characters and their problems.

“I would encourage people to come because this isn’t a show that they’re going to get to see very often,” Roland said.

Swezey said Ibsen is regarded nationally as the second best playwright to William Shakespeare because during the 1800s when he was writing, no one knew what he was doing because he was ahead of his time.

“It would be like today, an Eskimo revolutionizing theater and no one would know what it is because no one at the time read Norwegian drama,” Swezey said.

Ryan said a few new things have been brought to the text and that the overall quality of the play will be interesting. He said anyone who comes will be intrigued by the story. Swezey said the acting is going to be phenomenal.

“It’s sexy, it’s dark, it’s violent – it’s basically everything that modern drama is in film,” Swezey said.

Tickets for the play are $5 for students, $8 for seniors and $10 for adults and are available from the university box office at 620-341-6378 or toll free at 877-341-6378.

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Costume designer Andy Byers creates animal mating scenes for the Sundance Channel’s short film series “Green Porno.”Byers is speaking at 3 p.m. on April 21 in Science Hall Room 72.

The series is written, starring, directed and produced by Isabella Rossellini.

“It’s (Rossellini) dressing up, usually in a unitard with some sort of crazy eyeballs on or wearing wings and she’s humping some sort of paper sculpture that I’ve made,” Byers said.

In the series, Rossellini wears costumes created mostly out of paper. The set design is also predominantly made of paper. Byers said that Rossellini wants to keep the design simple.

“Usually if it’s silly and simple, she goes for it, and a lot of times if I try to make things more complicated, she shies away from it unless she finds it really attractive, so I usually try to go somewhere in between making things really attractive and making them really crappy,” Byers said.

Byers said that he will show some of the films and photographs of his work. Professor of Photography LarrySchwarm said Wichita State University’s art department was interested in a speaker ESU had last semester, so they did a sort of trade. This week, Byers is speaking at WSU for the TallgrassFilm Festival at the Ulrich museum.

“Last semester we had a speaker that they were very interested in and so they piggybacked onto us and since we were bringing him in anyway, they got him to come up to Wichita, and in doing that, it sort of opened up some doors,” Schwarm said.

According to the Sundance Channel Web site, Byers received his bachelor of fine arts in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute and his master’s degree at Ohio State University. Byers said by the time he was in graduate school, he wasn’t really using clay all that much.

“I was just using clay as a material like anything else, so at that point in time I was building these sort of theatrical pieces and I was building animals and things, but the only thing that was ceramics anymore was usually the eyeballs of the animals,” Byers said.

Byers said he never really understood costume design and that’s why he became interested in it. He said after he started listening to The Beatles in college and saw the “Magical Mystery Tour” album cover he figured out that costumes design and fashion design are not the same.

“It doesn’t have to be the elegant pieces that some really super famous designer made, you know, they can be a trash bag with a light bulb hanging over your head and you call yourself an idea, or whatever. That’s kind of how I’ve been looking at them,” Byers said.

Schwarm said the art department has art forum as a requirement for all students enrolled in the art department because it’s difficult for the students to see other contemporary work.Art forum is funded mainly by the Visual Arts Board. Every other Wednesday, a different artist comes to speak.

“The art department feels like a very big part of education for an art student is to see what other artists are doing and Emporia being somewhat isolated, it’s difficult for our students to get in to see galleries and museums,” Schwarm said.

Schwarm said any students or members of the community are welcome to attend any of the art forums.

“We try to cover as many different disciplines as we can, glass, ceramics, painting, this is the first costume designer we’ve had to my knowledge,” Schwarm said.

Byers said he’ll talk a little bit about what to do after graduating with an art degree and how to get out there and become an artist.

“I would like for (students) to get out of it that they can make stuff that looks shitty as long as it’s cool,” Byers said.

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Collaborative glass sculptors Jenny Pohlman and Sabrina Knowles from Seattle, Wash., are in Emporia this week to work with glass blowing students and demonstrate their work at the guild’s annual Glass Blowout on Saturday in the Art Annex.

“While we’re working, we’re explaining to the students some basic fundamentals of manipulating the material and how some of those fundamentals might apply to their own work that they’ve been doing,” Pohlman said.

The blowout begins at 9 a.m. with glass blowing demonstrations, then a potluck barbecue at 5 p.m. and ends with a glass auction at 7 p.m. Pieces from students, faculty, guest artists Jenny Pohlman and Sabrina Knowles and guest artists from previous years will be available at the auction and bluegrass band The Skirts are playing at the barbecue. Proceeds from the auction go to the Glass Guild’s supplies, scholarships, visiting artists and for the guild to attend the glass art society conference in June. The event is free to anyone who wishes to attend.

“(The auction) allows us to bring in artists like Jenny and Sabrina and it also allows us to upgrade our equipment and just fix things up around the shop that we normally wouldn’t be funded for through the school,” said Kristin Elliot, senior glass blowing major and president of the Glass Guild.

Associate professor of glass Patrick Martin said the blowout is the guild’s open house. He said current and previous students and their families as well as artists from around the state and artists who were once students at ESU attend every year. Martin said it was called the “Blowathon” before he started working at ESU 10 years ago.

“It’s been going on before I got here. We changed it a little bit to more of a visiting artist demonstration thing, but it’s still our open house,” Martin said.

Pohlman and Knowles said they have been working with one another for 18 years. Martin said the guild tries to bring in a working professional artist every year and this year the students get to see how a team works together. He said a lot of their work is mixed media.

“You’ll see how a team makes their work or and also how one will do one certain aspect of the process while the other will do other aspects and that’s how they work together,” Martin said.

Knowles said that though she and Pohlman have opposing aesthetics when it comes to their work, the message of it is unified. She said they both do glass blowing, both design and both do some metal working but Pohlman does the majority of the metal work.

“We found that the core of our philosophies about life and humanity and people just run totally parallel, so our work sort of brings our different aesthetics, but the vibration, kind of the soul of the work is unified,” Knowles said.

Elliot said Knowles and Pohlmanare also there to critique student work and show them techniques they might have never seen before. She said it allows them to see what life might be like when they graduate and possibly become professional artists themselves.

“They live in Seattle, which is like the glass place to be, and so they’re around all the professionals up there, so tips that they see that we will never see in Kansas they bring to us which is a big opportunity of the blowout,” Elliot said.

Knowles said she and Pohlman are enjoying working with the guild and feel like they’re all old friends. She said she wants to help students develop work ethics and stay true to what they want to do.

“We want to help them develop a nice work ethic and to respect one another in the hot shop and to recognize and appreciate that it is a team game so to speak and also that the limits are limitless,” Knowles said.

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With a $5 cover charge and drink specials of $2 wells and $3 bottles, America’s roots were brought to the Granada Theatre in the form of bluegrass music when the Basement Pickers Association and The Skirts performed on Friday.

“It was fantastic. I’d never seen either one play before, it was a good time,” said Scott Goering, senior computer science major. “I had a blast and everybody had lots of energy.”

The Basement Pickers opened with their nine piece ensemble including an upright bass, ukulele, mandolin, three acoustic guitars, fiddle, banjo and a variety of other instruments including harmonicas and a washboard. The band wore Hawaiian shirts that coincided with their cover of John Prine’s “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian.” The band covered traditional and contemporary “fiddletunes,” as well as other bluegrass hits.

The Skirts is a three piece, all female group out of Cottonwood Falls made up of bassist Sarah Bays, dulcimer and percussion instrumentalist Melissa Tastove and guitarist Elexa Dawson. All three women contributed vocally, harmonizing and taking on solos. They performed original songs and covered songs like “The Way I Am” by Ingrid Michaelson, “No Rain” by Blind Melon and “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King.

Bays said that The Skirts had played in Emporia before at Natasha’s and Beer:30, but they want to do more since they’re only 20 minutes away.

“We kind of had a lull there for a little bit where we were just kind of hanging out, working up some new stuff and now that the weather’s getting warm and people are out doing stuff again, we’re looking to play some more shows,” Bays said.

Dawson said she was impressed by the atmosphere of the theater and that someone in the audience said it felt like they weren’t in Emporia.

“In here you forget that you’re still in Emporia,” Dawson said. “I think Emporia’s doing a great job supporting the arts council and supporting the Granada Theatre.”
Bays, Dawson and Tastove have been playing together since May 2009, when Elexa and the Hitchikers, a band that Dawson and Tastove had worked with, broke up.

“We all just started playing together over at (Dawson’s) house, jamming and hanging out and eating food and got a chance to play at a family BBQ and that went really well and then just kind of went from there,” Tastove said.

Bays, who went to K-State as a voice major, said she began playing bass not even a year ago and Tastove said she’s played her instruments for about 2 years. Dawson has played guitar off and on since she was 12 years old.

“I got nails put on for junior prom, so I didn’t play the guitar again for like four years or something until I was 20 and I went to Winfield and picked up the guitar that I’d learned on and then started playing again,” Dawson said.

Tastove said the people that inspire their music are people they cover like Neil Young, Jonie Mitchell and The Beatles.

“Well, Elexa writes most of the songs. A lot of the other songs we do are just cover songs of, you know, just bands that we like or just songs that we really like,” Bays said.

Tastove said the best part about playing together is that they all love each other and have a lot of fun. Dawson said there are a lot of “That’s what she said” jokes. As far as playing music in general goes, Dawson described it as an out of body experience.

“I think that it is able to convey messages that words alone cannot,” Dawson said.

Bays said that as far as long term goals go, the band is just looking to make a c.d. and get their music out there

“We’re not in it to get big and make lots of money,” Bays said. “We’ve all got our day jobs and we all love our lives and what we do and we want that to stay the same, so we’re not looking to go on tour or anything like that, just produce a CD and be able to share our music with people.”

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Photo Illustration by Jonathan Elliott/The Bulletin

Starting April 1, students can no longer add funds to the vending account on Hornet Cards. Assistant Director of Business Greg Larson said lack of student usage and lack of program support from vending companies lead to the discontinuance of the service.

“There are a number of reasons for that as far as non support from the vending companies, they just don’t see the upside as far as sales,” Larson said. “Sales have decreased over the past three years in that program and also it’s very costly to maintain.”

Any student with money still on the vending account can stop by the Hornet I.D. Office in the Memorial Union. Funds less than $5 will be added to the student’s “Hornet Bucks” account, or declining balance account. For amounts greater than $5, students have the option of putting it in the declining balance account or getting a refund check.

Larson said the office is accepting requests for refunds or transfers until April 1, 2011. Senior administrative assistant Terri Conger said the process for finding out how much is in a student’s account and transferring it to the declining balance takes about five minutes.

“If it’s over $5, they have a choice to put it on the declining balance or we can get a refund check for them, which of course will take a couple days to do,” Conger said.

Larson said the decline in the service’s usage began about three years ago and it corresponded with an increase in the use of credit and debit cards in other retail areas like the Hornet Express.

“It’s just sort of replacing that spending,” Larson said.

Conger said she’s had one student come in to transfer her funds. She said although the amount in that particular account was small (Conger said it was around 23 cents) students should check in case they have more money than they think on their accounts.

“I think the one woman had just a little bit. It’s lost money and it’s not much, but its money that they’ve forgotten about that they won’t utilize that just sits there and they forget it’s even on there,” Conger said.

Larson said a large part of the change is that the magnetic stripe on the back of the card is old technology. He said the office is working on issuing a request for proposal for the beverage contract on campus to change the vending machines to either an online system like the “Hornet Bucks” account, where all account information is on a computer, or a system that is compatible with credit or debit cards.

Larson said right now the programs are too expensive, but in a year or two there’s a possibility of it being integrated.

“I think we’re sort of on the bleeding edge of that technology right now where it’s very costly and within the next couple years we’ll see the cost for that sort of a program decrease, and that’s when you want to jump on board, not when it’s so costly that it’s not cost efficient to implement it,” Larson said.

Larson said that when the Hornet Cards were changed to cards without the Lyon County State Bank identification on it, they couldn’t find a company that produced cards with the vending stripe on them. He said if students were using the program and it was cost effective, they would have found cards with vending stripes.

“It really was a dying technology and because fewer people were using it we just saw less benefit for that and we see greater things on the horizon for Hornet Card accounts that are tied to newer technology, better reporting, more transparent for everyone, better for auditing purposes, and if they lost their card, they wouldn’t lose their funds in an online account- much better off for everybody,” Larson said.

No other uses of the Hornet Card were affected with the change.

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Using an acoustic guitar and audience participation, Grant Jenkins, associate professor of English and director of writing at the University of Tulsa, and Cheryl Pallant, Lubell visiting assistant professorship and teacher of creative writing at the University of Tulsa, read excerpts of their book “Morphs” last night in the William Allen White Library.

“Morphs,” which was released in 2009, is an experimental collaboration over the course of 18 months in which the authors sent 36 poems back and forth via email then altered and revised, or “morphed” them.

“I think it’s more about communicating than it is anything else, you know the barriers and ways of coming up with fresh ideas and ways of understanding one another,” Reference and Instructional Librarian Caleb Puckett said.

Attendants of the reading were given four note cards at the beginning, asked to write whatever came to mind during the reading and then the authors asked them to read some of the phrases out loud during pauses in one of the poems. Another poem became a country western song in which the audience was encouraged to sing along after hearing the chorus a few times.

Pallant said Jenkins comes at poetry from a scholarly perspective and she comes at it from a writing perspective, so they were always learning from each other.

“His writing became a little bit more like mine and mine became a little more like his and I don’t think it will ever be the same,” Pallant said.

Jenkins said the two never argued about the poetry, but he did post their work to his Myspace without asking Pallant first, which he said was their only controversial moment. In the book’s intro, he said he posted the poems because he “didn’t take them very seriously at first.”

“We never thought we would do a series and like having a process that would fit everything we did under it. I mean, before we did just maybe a poem here or there, but this turned out to be something more extended,” Jenkins said

Puckett met Jenkins while working at the University of Tulsa before coming to Emporia State.  The two served as editors on the literary journal there, the Nimrod National Journal, and worked on poetry workshops together. Puckett said the two kept in contact and Jenkins told him he was trying to set up some readings.

Associate Professor of University Libraries and Archives Cynthia Akers said she thought it was wonderful when Caleb approached her about the library hosting the event. She said the library is working to create better spaces for events with constant remodeling and the seminar room where the reading was held is one of those places. Akers said the goal is to get away from the stereotype that the library is only a place for information.

“We really want to see it actually become more of a space where students feel welcome and where they can start becoming more aware of the fact that these types of activities are going to start going on more,” Akers said.

Admission to the reading was free and copies of the book were available to be purchased and autographed by Pallant and Jenkins.

“Basically, they just did this out of their own pocket, which is absolutely wonderful and that to me just says even more about their commitment,” Akers said.

Pallant said she hopes people learn to enjoy language through the book because a lot of times, especially when she’s teaching, students think there’s one way to write and they get so caught up in getting it right that they forget to savor the reading.

“It’s so important that you know, that you’re enjoying words, so I would hope that they would enjoy and laugh and ponder,” Pallant said.

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Lead singer of Beebop Flim Flam performs Thursday night at Albert Taylor Hall during UAC’s Battle of the Bands. Beebop Flim Flam lost out the Paperclips. Kellen Jenkins/The Bulletin

Emporia State’s Albert Taylor Hall was rocking last Thursday night with the UAC sponsored Battle of the Bands. The Black Tuxedos out of Emporia, Beebop Flim Flam from Lawrence, Voice Issue of Kansas City and The Paperclips from Kansas City, Mo., battled to decide who would open for Ha Ha Tonka and Antennas Up at Flintstock April 28, but The Paperclips came out on top.

“We’re super excited to win, that’s pretty awesome and honoring,” Paperclips’ bassist Jason Richards said.

Judges from Beer:30, Kiss 103.1 FM and the ESU music department determined the winner. Zoiks! performed improvisational comedy in between musical performances and a free raffle was held with prizes like a discounted piercing, an ESU blanket and sugar-free Redbull. Admission to the event was free because it was paid for by student fees.

“It was a chance for them to watch Zoiks! perform and hear local artists. I mean it’s hard because there are not a lot of activities that don’t involve alcohol or pain and this is completely free to students,” UAC music chair and senior English major Sarah Kirby said.

Kirby said this was not the first time the university has had battle of the bands, but it was the first year where the reward is to open at Flintstock.

“I just thought it’d be a cool prize because they will be opening for Ha Ha Tonka and Antennas Up, which are both nationally recognized bands, so it’s a pretty big deal,” Kirby said.

Kirby said the event was not only a way to find someone to open for Flintstock, but mainly a way to expose students to local music.

“It’s a great way to showcase local music, so we just wanted to do that and get the music out there and we just thought it’d be a good idea,” Kirby said.

Junior communications major Brett Wyrick said if he had been judging, he would have voted for the Paperclips, too. He said he thinks it’s cool that they won because their southern rock style is similar to that of Ha Ha Tonka.

“That southern rock that they played was real, real good and especially since they’re opening up for Ha Ha Tonka, which has kind of a southern-esque lead singer too, a lot like them, so it’s going to be real solid to open up for them,” Wyrick said.

The Paperclips’ guitarist and vocalist Jake Briscoe said he felt like the band didn’t play as well as they could have but no one else except for them would have noticed. Briscoe said a lot of it was due to how Albert Taylor is set up.

“I’ve got mixed emotions because I feel like we played the worst that we’ve played in a long time. Just because of some faulty equipment and I couldn’t get the right guitar tone that I wanted tonight,” Briscoe said.

Despite technical difficulties, the band said they enjoyed playing because the crowd got really into it. At one point, Briscoe just started tapping his foot and everyone began clapping.

“They were participating at every turn, like you did something cool and they were like ‘Whoo!’” Richards said. “This was a very enthralled audience, they were fun tonight.”
Having played in Emporia before, at Beer:30, Briscoe said it seems like people in Kansas care more about music.
“A lot of the places we play, it’s like you can play your best show you’ve ever played and people are just like ‘alright’. Sometimes they’re into it, sometimes they’re not it just depends,” Briscoe said.

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Faculty Senate discussed topics ranging from email encryption to budget cuts at yesterday’s meeting.

President Carol Russell announced that the Council of Faculty Senate Presidents faculty input survey was completed and will be looked at by the Faculty Senate Executive Board. She said collective results would be shared and taken to the different departments for input.

“Obviously, there’s some things we can’t change, but there are things that we can look to the future and have some directions for the future,” said Russell.

Also, Russell talked about the COFSP February meeting, where the Kansas Board of Regents requested a response to budget cuts. Russell said that ways to respond included a web site with information, a list of legislatures and their resolutions, a statement from student government and other information. She said that the board requested copies of what Emporia State will be doing.

“We have our cumulative report with numbers from each institution in addition to collective, so that we have talking points of the state in addition to our own in regular communities,” Russell said.

Russell also discussed a Shared Governance Meeting, Tuition Assistance Proposal work and reminded senators that new elections are approaching.

Academic Affairs committee head George Durler reported progress on revisions to policies on Faculty-Initiated Student Withdrawal. Committee on Campus Governance chair Kevin Rabas spoke about University committee reviews and updates on the Days on Campus survey. Faculty Affairs chair Mike Morales introduced new businesses of Modifications to Regular and Interim Policies and Procedures and the Furlough policy. He also updated the senate on Grievance Policy progress.

Old Business that was brought up included a second reading for the Information Technology Usage Policy in which Durler proposed an amendment to lines 51 and 57 of the policy. The existing line 51, which read “which should not be sent in an email transmission to a non-university account” was replaced with “should not be sent using email transmission unless encrypted using a university supplied encryption product.” Line 57, which read “no expression of privacy or confidentiality,” was amended to “no expression or expectation of personal privacy or confidentiality.”

Durler said that Technology and Computing Services is looking for an encryption program that would be available to all of those on the university server. The program will allow confidential information to be sent via email while being protected. Emails sent from university accounts to outside email would not be readable due to the encryption software.

“It may cause some inconvenience, but it would also create a situation where if there’s automatic forwarding, it will not compromise the data and confidentiality,” Durler said.
Announcements of upcoming events in the music and art departments were made before the meeting was adjourned.

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SIUC Professor Jonathan Bean speaks about civil rights Tuesday night at the Granada Theater. Professor Bean addressed issues from early government racism to affirmative action. Kenny Thompson/The Bulletin

The second of this semester’s three Lectures on Liberty occurred last Tuesday at the Granada Theater. Professor of history at Southern Illinois University Jonathon Bean gave his presentation titled, “God Almighty Made but One Race, Separating Race and State,” based on his latest book, “Race and Liberty in America: the Essential Reader.”

“It’s the first book to tell the story of classical liberalism, to bring it together, and yet people like Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington and the NAACP, they all breathe classical liberalism,” Bean said.

In his presentation, Bean showed a slideshow, gave a history of civil rights leaders and explained the ideas of classical liberalism. Bean said classical liberals believe in individual freedom, individual liberty and limited government.

“Classical liberalism is liberalism as it should be,” he said.

Bean explained in his presentation that he wrote two other books over the history of government that resulted in him having to testify before the Supreme Court because he exposed that “affirmative action creates racial discrimination.” He said what he discovered in writing those books inspired him to write “Race and Liberty.”

“Programs designed to help disadvantaged minorities ended up hurting them in the worst way and I began to see that there were connections between what our government does today for the common good and what it did and said 100 years ago, 200 years ago,” Bean said.

Bean said that many of the civil rights leaders he talked about in the lecture and in his book are often forgotten about because they “don’t fit.”

“They’re not ‘big government’ liberals and they’re not ‘big government’ conservatives and so how do we put these people in a box?” Bean said.

Associate professor of history Gregory Schneider is teaching the course, Liberty and the American Tradition, at Emporia State which is in conjunction with the lecture series. He said it’s important for students to be exposed to classical liberal thought and to have a chance to see if some of those ideas appeal to them.

“This is not meant to, in the course especially, proselytize or to push my agenda on them, but it’s meant to expose these ideas to them to see if they make sense for them and make sense in their own lives when it comes to issues of liberty,” Schneider said.

Schneider also said the lecture, being on civil rights, was timely with Black History month. He said people tend to think of civil rights as being tied in with government, but Bean explained that the government gets in the way more than  it helps.

“It’s government that actually interferes with that rather than helps, so it’s a different kind of approach towards understanding the development of equality of civil rights under the guise of the ideas of liberty and the American founding,” Schneider said.
Abbie Morrison, junior elementary education major, said she enjoyed that Bean brought up figures that are sometimes overlooked in the fight against racism. She also said she agreed with his ideas.

“I agree with it because it’s something we’re discussing a lot more in our teaching classes is that, you know, things are changing so much that we’re not going to have a race, and so it kind of was an issue that I see needs to be dropped,” Morrison said.

Bean said he’s answered questions from all over the country, but he loves talking to students because that’s what he does for a living. He said he wrote the book with the hope that teachers might use it in their classrooms because everything else out there is “same old, same old.”  He said with teaching you have to love what you study and convey that love to students.

“You have to have a compulsion to be a good teacher, to try to be a good teacher and to take a subject, history, that so many students found boring in high school and make it interesting and that’s my job. And it’s fun… and it beats working in a factory,” Bean said.
Lectures on Liberty are free and open to the public. The next lecture will be April 8 at 7 p.m. at the Granada Theatre. The speaker will be Benjamin Powell, professor of economics at Suffolk University.

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Greek life is about being involved in the community, according to Ashley McCullough, Alpha Sigma Alpha president and senior communications major. Kappa Sigma President and junior history major Kyle Lococo says it’s about a bond that you form with your brothers in a fraternity.

“It’s more just like a choice that you make when you get here to join something more than just you in college and get away from the normal experience,” Lococo said.

McCullough said Alpha Sigma Alpha’s core values are generosity, growth, responsibility, enjoyment, relationships and learning balance and integrity.

“By keeping those in mind, it just really helps you to be an overall well rounded person and really caring of everybody else,” McCullough said.

There are 59 members in the sorority and McCullough said one of their goals right now is recruiting more girls. She said they are also focusing on encouraging members to get involved in more activities and keeping a strong sisterhood.

The sorority had its district convention in Kansas City this past weekend and some of the girls participated in the Polar Bear Plunge to support Special Olympics on Feb. 20. Alpha Sigma Alpha is also participating in the Lyon County Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society on April 23.

“(Relay for Life) is a fundraiser for the Cancer Society and we have a team called the ‘hard working hippies’ and we just raise money and then we walk from 5 p.m. until 6 in the morning, just to raise awareness and help support the cancer association,” McCullough said.

Freshman English major Katie Galliart said she joined Alpha Sigma Alpha even though she wasn’t sure about being involved in the Greek system. She said the girls were very welcoming and when she walked into the house “it felt like home.”

“I’d seen a lot of TV shows and movies and I was like I don’t know about sororities and stuff but I went over to the house and everybody just seemed really nice,” Galliart said.

Lococo said that Kappa Sigma’s core values center around serving the community. He said it’s important to help out because the fraternity wants to give back to those that help them.

“These are people that we actually spend time with that help us, that help out the community and make sure that this campus continues to run, so we want to give back to them and help them out as best as we can,” Lococo said.

The fraternity gave carnations to the elderly on Valentine’s Day and they are going to Village Elementary School on Monday to play dodge ball and hang out with the kids.

Lococo said the boys are also working to stop the Emporia School Board from making cuts to the music program.

“We’re having a showing at the hearing to try and to show them that even though it’s meant for the elementary schools that the kids of this campus aren’t going to stand for it,” Lococo said. “We feel like those kids need the right education. Even those of us who aren’t specifically in the music program feel that that’s a huge part of their education and they should be allowed to get that the right way.”

Lococo said athletics are important to Kappa Sigma. He said one of the fraternity’s goals is to win a sports championship yearly.

“We’re big into the sports, we compete in (Intrafraternity Council) sports and we usually win that every year,” said Jake Winkler, Kappa Sigma treasurer and sophomore pre-physical therapy major.

Lococo said some other goals they have are to improve their GPA and do more community service than is required.

Lococo said he got involved with Greek life because he came to Emporia not knowing many people. He said when he went to the house for the first time, he connected with everyone.

“Everyone had the same interests I did, did the same kind of stuff I did, and then just getting to know those guys just created a great bond,” Lococo said.

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Speakers, films, poetry readings, award ceremonies and conferences are all on the March agenda as part of a celebration of Women’s History Month.

Karen Smith, director of the Ethnic and Gender Studies Program, coordinated the events for Women’s History Month and also for Black History Month in February.

“Black History month and Women’s History month are important because we need to be reminded of our history and these are recent additions to the United States calendar,” Smith said. “They came in post civil rights movements and post women’s liberation movement.”

She said that it is important not to forget those who changed history.

“Time goes by, it’s been 50 years since the student involvement aspect to the civil rights movement,” Smith said. “People who are in college now don’t know anything about that.

“They know there was Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks, but the actual story I think kind of gets lost and so that’s why we’re kind of trying to keep it alive with having these kinds of events. The same with women’s history. Even though a lot of the events are not actually about history, it’s a way of recognizing women’s accomplishments, achievements, struggles.”

The Women’s History Month Reception at 3:30 p.m. March 5 at the Sauder Alumni Center will host an award ceremony for Leslie Lewis, former professor at Emporia State and founder of the Ethnic and Gender Studies program.

“She’s going to be receiving the Ruth Schillinger Award which we give every year to a woman who has served the women of Emporia State,” Smith said, “And she certainly did by establishing that program.”

Lewis remembered the first Ruth Schillinger award that was given.

“We gave Ruth Schillinger the first award and I have a very distinct memory of that so it’s quite an honor to be thinking about her and her legacy and that award in the context of what the Ethnic and Gender Studies program has done for Emporia State University,” Lewis said.

After eight years of working for ESU, Lewis left in 1999 to teach at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, and is currently the Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Ithaca College. She will return to Emporia to receive the award and to give a lecture on the value of liberal arts education at 7 p.m. March 4 in the Kanza Room.

The next event, on March 6, is an all-day conference for middle school girls. It will feature various women speakers with careers in math or science as well as workshops such as “You can do WHAT with Paper!” which is about chemistry and a biology session titled “Chocolate, Past, Present, and Tasty.”

“Women are under-represented in a lot of science and math careers so we just think it’s important for these young women to realize the opportunities that are before them and to plan accordingly to keep working on math and science and see what it can lead to in their future,” said Elizabeth Yanik, professor of mathematics, who helped coordinate the event.

The event will give the girls an opportunity that some presenters said they never had.

“A lot of the women who present, they ended up in math or science but they say ‘I really wish I’d had an opportunity like this,’” Yanik said. “So a lot of women give up their time thinking that it’s a good thing for young women today to see.”

Yanik said that the month overall is a chance for people to reflect of the advancements that women have made.

“I just think it’s a nice time to stop and consider a lot of the important contributions that women have made to society and to this country and I think that’s becoming more well known but certainly in the past.”

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