Chad Kautzer, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado in Denver, speaks to a group of students and other members of the Emporia community about Occupy movements.
Jennifer Pendarvis/The Bulletin

The latest addition to the Zimmerman Lecture series, presented by Chad Kautzer Monday night, connected concepts from philosophers John Dewey and Hannah Arendt to the recent Occupy movement and Democratic practices as a whole.

The Zimmerman Lecture is named for John J. Zimmerman who was a professor at Emporia State from 1954 to 1982. The first lecture in the series was in 1987.

Kautzer said his inspiration for the lecture, “Returning to Democracy: Dewey, Arendt, and Occupy,” came from his own personal questions about the Occupy movement and what it was doing as a Democratic body.

“Most Americans actually have no experience with being in a Democratic public, and when you do experience one and those expectations of giving reasons and patiently listening and collaborating, those are often off-putting or jarring when they experience that for the first time,” Kautzer said.

Kautzer is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Denver, Colo., and he’s been an active participant in Occupy Denver since October 2011. He attended college at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, then the University of Wisconsin, Madison for his undergraduate work, and he attended Stony Brook University for his master’s degree and doctorate.

Luke Drury, senior political science major and Associated Student Government legislative director, said he attended the lecture primarily as part of an extra credit opportunity offered in his political geography class.

“Overall, I thought his message was very interesting in that the idea of a polis, the idea of people coming together because of a common problem, and about how, inherently, the Tea Party and Occupy are different – how he made that distinction between the two, I thought that was very interesting,” Drury said.

Ed Emmer, associate professor of philosophy, said he met Kautzer while he was doing his graduate work, and he felt Kautzer’s presentation had perfect timing because Occupy has come into existence very recently and has not been able to be addressed before in a Zimmerman Lecture.

“I’m interested in Occupy,” Emmer said. “I can’t claim to be an activist in any serious sense of the word, but I’m very interested… I thought that he really gave it a really solid theoretical foundation. You’re talking about what it is when people get together in a certain way, they actually create something that doesn’t exist when they’re not together, and that’s crucial.”

Kautzer said he hoped students who came to the lecture for different reasons would each come away with something relevant for themselves.

“I just want to key them in to something really important happening in their lives, and maybe they’ll pay attention to it from here on out,” Kautzer said.

Kautzer is currently working on a book titled “Radical Philosophy: An Introduction.” The book’s purpose, according to Kautzer, is to introduce people to different methods and topics that are considered radical in the philosophical tradition.

Former and retired employees of the Dolly Madison factory gathered across the street in a picket line on the afternoon the bakery closed, Nov. 16th. Employees set up the picket primarily to protest against the company for taking away their pensions.
Jenny Pendarvis/The Bulletin

Hostess closed its doors after 82 years in business due to a two week strike by the Bakers Union. The Dolly Madison plant at 1525 Industrial Road, which is the city’s second largest employer, is shutting down, resulting in the loss of roughly 500 jobs for the Emporia community. This marks the worst job loss the city has seen since the Tyson plan laid off 1,500 employees in 2008.

Joe Endres, salesman for American Electric, has lived in Emporia for 33 years, and the Dolly Madison plant has been one of his premier accounts for last 30 years. Endres said he felt mismanagement by upper management was a major factor in the failure of the company and that the closing would have a major, negative impact on Emporia – many employees used their jobs at the factory as a secondary income source, he said.

“It’s just one of those deals where I didn’t think it really needed to happen, and I just think people who don’t live here convinced people who do live here to make some bad decisions,” Endres said. “I think this thing led down a path that nobody believed would happen, and lo and behold, we woke up one morning and it did.”

The strike began on Nov. 9 and included two-thirds of the company’s 33 bakeries. The company reached an agreement with the Teamsters, which represented 6,700 workers at Hostess, in September. But the Bakery Worker’s Union, which represented 5,600 workers at Hostess, did not agree to the terms, which included an immediate 8 percent pay cut, suspension of the company’s pension payments into 2015 and a 17 percent cut in contributions for health coverage.

George F. Rayburn, CEO of Hostess, released a letter to the terminated employees detailing the company shutdown and explaining the reasoning behind the liquidation of the company’s assets.

“We deeply regret taking this action,” Rayburn said in the letter. “But we simply could not continue to operate without the ability to produce or deliver our products.”

A FAQ document answering questions that employees may have following their termination was posted on the company’s official website. Questions covered a number of topics, including information on pensions, 401(k)s and how and when they would receive their final paychecks.

The shutdown was approved by federal bankruptcy judge Robert D. Drain for the Southern District of New York on Nov. 21, which began the process of terminating 15,000 of Hostess’s 18,500 employees. The sudden termination was to allow them to begin applying for unemployment benefits.

“This estate will suffer substantial diminution if this wind-down plan is not quickly implemented,” Drain said in his decision. “It appears to me that the debtors have taken the right course.”

Drain also said this course of action would be much more beneficial than a less-structured Chapter 7 liquidation.

Representatives from Hostess and the Bakers Union were ordered by Drain to meet Nov. 17 to attempt to come to an agreement in order to save the company. However, the mediations collapsed after several hours.

The New York Times reported Hostess had $860 million in debt earlier this year and reported revenue of $2.5 billion, as well as a net loss of $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2012.

Luke Drury, senior political science, talks about Higher Education Day at the meeting last Thursday.
Lingzi Su/The Bulletin

Associated Student Government recognized a new organization and approved a reserve fund request for Sigma Tau Gamma at their meeting last Thursday. The senate also introduced two new bills regarding textual amendments to one of ASG’s allocation bills from last year, as well as the bill for the 2013 fiscal year allocations.

Audrey Shown, junior sociology major, represented the Anthropology Club as the president of the organization. Shown said that the club’s purpose is to raise awareness of anthropology, which she considers to be “a really small field here at Emporia State.”

“I want to do more community service than we have in the past, hopefully with more events around the area,” Shown said, “and just to get more people involved in grad schools and things like that in the area of anthropology.”

Shown said that the group currently has eight members, but if ASG approved the group, then she would speak to anthropology classes in order to help recruit more members. The senate voted to approve the organization by a vote of 22-0-0.

The only other bill voted on at the meeting was a reserve fund request for the Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity, which was represented by Luke Farnsworth, junior physical and health education major and president of the fraternity. The request was for additional funds for the fraternity’s regional conference.

The reason for the request, according to the bill, was the location being changed very recently to Jefferson City and that they would need to add roughly 120 miles to the allocations. The group will take eight members to the conference. Farnsworth explained that the costs for the conference are paid out of pocket because any fundraising the fraternity does goes towards philanthropy.

“We go do workshops on how to recruit better, how to have better risk management skills that we can learn especially when chapter is going through an appeal process through a risk management event…just taking things back to our chapter to improve Emporia State,” Farnsworth said.

The senate voted to approve the request by a vote of 21-0-1. The senate will meet again at 5 p.m. in the Senate Chamber on Nov. 29 to vote on the textual amendments as well as the recognition of another RSO, Beta Beta Beta.

Associated Student Government President Brooke Schmidt pied Washburn Student Government Association President Eric Benedict in the face after Emporia State was announced as the food drive winner at halftime during the football game against Washburn on Saturday.
Illustration by Ellen Weiss

For the second year in a row, Emporia State has “canned the Bods” and won the annual food drive competition against Washburn. The results were announced last Saturday at the football game between Washburn and ESU.

ESU gathered 39,548 cans to beat Washburn’s approximate 17,000 cans, said Brooke Schmidt, senior Spanish major and Associated Student Government president. Cans gathered during the event were donated to the Salvation Army food pantry.

“I think everybody was just really pumped up about it,” Schmidt said. “We did a lot of marketing, I think, than we’ve done in the past and we partnered with a lot more organizations.”

Schmidt said the victory was a group effort stemming from partnerships not only with Recognized Student Organizations on campus, but also with the community. Among the groups that ASG partnered with were Sigma Alpha Lambda (SAL), the leadership honor society; the Memorial Union bookstore; the athletic department; Residential Life, and they even received a food grant from Walmart.

RSOs had their own competition within the Can the Bods event to see which organization could gather the most cans. SAL came out as the winner, raising 7,303 cans, said Tim Thomas, senior crime and delinquency studies major and president of SAL.

“It is truly about the advancement of other people, and that’s what I care about – seeing people develop, grow and know that someone out there cares about them and actually loves them,” Thomas said.

Thomas said that SAL’s success was due to a number of factors, including members donating cans, community involvement in the project and partnership with other groups. He also said group collected $100, which was used to purchase more food for the drive.

“We didn’t do it by ourselves,” Thomas said. “I thank all the RSOs who helped with that, and the fellow student body, as well as the outside organizations, such as the churches and businesses, as well as the community.”

The Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority raised the most cans among the Greek community with a total of 183, said Danae Coffee, junior economics major and philanthropy chair for ASA. This is ASA’s second consecutive year winning the Greek portion of the drive.

“We are really excited to make an impact on the Emporia community,” Coffee said. “We believe that life is not taking in only, it is giving out, too. We have a passion and drive for community service and are excited the whole campus can see our efforts.”

Coffee said ASA had a competition within their chapter to see which group could raise the most cans, and they also did reverse trick-or-treating, where they went door to door asking for cans for the food drive.

Although Can the Bods is over, Schmidt said the campus can look forward to many other ASG sponsored events this school year.

“You can look forward to a lot of stuff being promoted with the 150th (anniversary) coming up next year,” Schmidt said. “The student body has a lot to look forward to, seeing some action taking place with ASG…we’re going to try to move forward, and I think we’re going to try to do a lot more community service in this upcoming semester.”

Yali Huang, a 23-year-old unspecified major, is in critical condition after being struck by a gray 2002 Jeep Liberty last Thursday while crossing the street in the 1500 block of Merchant Street near Butcher Education Center. Huang is originally from Shenzen Guandong, China and is at Emporia State for a two semester exchange program.

The Emporia Police Department (EPD) was dispatched to the scene at approximately 7:50 p.m. after a call was received reporting the accident. Huang was transported to Newman Regional Hospital by ambulance. From there, she was transported by Life Team to Wesley Medical Hospital in Wichita, where she was declared to be in critical condition.

The driver of the jeep was 72-year-old Patricia Sutton of Americus. Sutton was travelling north on Merchant Street when she struck Huang. Sutton was questioned at the scene, but she was not taken into custody, according to Lt. Jim Tilton of the EPD. But Tilton also said that charges will probably be filed in the case.

Justin Lawrence, junior crime and delinquency studies major, heard the accident and witnessed the aftermath. Lawrence was in his car in the Parkview Apartments parking lot talking on his cellphone when he heard a “big, loud bang, like something solid hitting something else solid.”

Lawrence said he saw the Jeep – which he thought might have blown a tire – pulled over to the side of the road and a truck pulled over on the other side. A few minutes later, he saw members of the Chi Omega house moving toward the street.

“There was one girl looking over something, so I hung up, went over and found out a student had been hit by the Jeep,” Lawrence said. “It didn’t look good – she wasn’t really moving or talking a whole bunch. I really didn’t get close enough to look; I just kind of stayed on the west end of the street.”

Lawrence said that officer with the EPD, as well as an ambulance and a fire truck, arrived shortly after he got to the road. Lawrence said that he felt that incidents like this one are preventable and that higher awareness for students could be the answer.

“There should be some sort of statistic or some sort of awareness that says, ‘Hey, this has happened. Here’s how you can prevent it. Here’s what we’re doing to prevent it,’” he said. “Something as simple as looking both ways can definitely prevent this kind of travesty in a student’s life.”

Lina Su, Chinese freshman music major, along with others, visited Huang on Tuesday to check on her. Su said that Huang’s condition was improving.

“She’s better than before. She can open her eyes and listen to what we say,” Su said.

Su met Huang in the airport on her way to America. She heard about the accident Thursday night when a friend called her and told her the news. According to Su, Huang’s mother is applying for a visa to come and see her and may be arriving next week.

Huang was still in critical condition by press time on Wednesday.

John C. Rich (left) speaks with Cory Haag, one of the three outstanding recent graduates honored at the Alumni Dinner.
Jordan Storrer/The Bulletin

Emporia State honored seven alumni at the annual Alumni Awards Banquet last Thursday for their achievements following graduation. Three alumni were chosen for the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award, and four were chosen to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award.

Howard West was one of three outstanding graduates who received the award at the banquet. He said that his education at ESU gave him the well-rounded background he needed to be successful in the business world and that he was excited when he found out he was being honored by the university.

“I’ve been to international assignments. I’ve traveled the world,” West said. “I’ve been doing several things, and then to have an award like this, I believe it ranks up there…very high as far as an achievement.”

West currently lives in Boston, Mass. and graduated from ESU in 2007 with a master’s degree in instructional design and technology. He is currently a technical support engineer and helps in training and development on aviation and public safety.

Leah Childers, another alumna recognized at the ceremony, graduated in 2005 with her master’s in mathematics and is currently an assistant professor at Pittsburg State University. Childers said that her experiences at ESU were vital to her success following graduation.

“I learned how to teach here and had a great foundation which I use every day in the classroom,” Childers said. “There’s never a time when they teach you how to teach, so that education background makes me a better professor.”

Childers also earned a doctorate in mathematics from Louisiana State University in 2010. While at ESU, Childers was active in Kappa Mu Epsilon, the mathematics honor society, and was a 2003 Outstanding Senior.

Cory Haag was the third outstanding recent graduate to be recognized. Haag is the director of Operations for Haag Management in Emporia. He graduated in 2002 with a degree in business management. In 2011, Haag oversaw the development of the Kellogg Plaza and Lofts near campus on Commercial Street and continues to work with businesses and groups in Emporia.

“I think the most important thing as you get out there is not to be scared to really go out there and sell yourself,” Haag said. “When it comes to interviewing, really go interview and really try to go out and get a great job from the get-go.”

Dale E. Cushinberry, Norma Lu Haffenstein, Dianne Welsh and Floyd Hoelting each received ESU’s highest honor, the Distinguished Alumni Award. Hoelting is currently the executive director of the division of housing and food at the University of Texas and has had more than 40 years of experience in higher education. Hoelting said that his education at ESU prepared him in more ways than just academically.

“There are things I learned just being here, and I always say that here (ESU) you get an education down on the ground, you get fundamentals and life and leadership and all those kinds of things,” Hoelting said.

The recipients for each award are chosen in different ways. The outstanding graduates have to be 10 years or less away from their degree and are chosen by the deans and faculty of their school, whereas the distinguished alumni have a slightly more exhaustive process.

Distinguished alumni are nominated by a faculty member, administrator or another alumnus, and then their nomination is sent to a committee made up of members of the Alumni Board, representatives from each school, the Alumni Foundation, and the president. This committee then chooses, usually, between three and five alumni to receive the award.