Wichita State's independent, student-run news source

The Sunflower

Wichita State's independent, student-run news source

The Sunflower

Wichita State's independent, student-run news source

The Sunflower

Candidates speak about deadly police shootings, campaign in battleground states

TJ Rigg September 22, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spoke about the recent deadly officer-involved shootings of black men in Oklahoma and North Carolina Wednesday.They were campaigning in key battleground states.In Orlando,...

Bardo reaches out to military veteran students through forum

Angela Lingg September 22, 2016

As Wichita State develops into a more diverse university, WSU President John Bardo wants to make sure one student group isn’t left out.  Bardo sat down with military veterans Monday afternoon to learn...

SGA Vice-President Taben Azad sits in his office. 

Talking with Taben: SGA vice-president details typical day

Andrew Linnabary September 22, 2016

The second after waking up, Taben Azad checks his email.He makes a point to respond to anything pressing, then showers and eats breakfast.Leaving his parents' home, he makes his way to campus, arriving...

Cody Herrin, American hero

Cody Herrin, American hero

Chance Swaim September 22, 2016

Cody Herrin has blown up deadly weapons in Iraq and guarded the president and secretary of state in Israel, but when he graduates summa cum laude from Wichita State this December, it will be his outstanding...

Organization travels to Uganda, completes charitable engineering projects

Nathan Davis September 22, 2016

A crying woman falls to her knees in front of Dominic Gonzalez.She doesn't know what he is doing here, but she knows that whatever it is he is here to help. He is an obvious outsider, bearing no resemblance...

13,000 students led by one Shepard

13,000 students led by one Shepard

Andrew Linnabary, Managing Editor September 22, 2016

“This is my life.” That's how second-term Student Body President Joseph Shepard describes his role in Student Government Association. When he wakes up, he immediately looks at his calendar...

‘Floated_Couture’

Chance Swaim, News Editor September 20, 2016

What started as the Ulrich Museum of Art’s opening art exhibition Friday night quickly turned into an exhibition of the structural problems of the art buildings on campus.

“Coded_Couture,” an exhibition featuring 10 international artists’ and designers’ work, opened to the public at 7 p.m. in the Ulrich to a crowd of nearly 500 people.

By 8:20 p.m., a storm had rolled into Wichita and showered the area with rain. A leak in the ceiling of one gallery and water pooling under the doors on the first floor of the museum caused Bob Workman, director of the museum, to close the galleries and move the reception to McKnight Hall. About 8 inches of rain fell in the Wichita area between Friday night and Saturday morning.

Workman said the museum had to take artwork off a wall in one gallery and they will be rehung when the gallery is cleaned. The museum’s art vault, which protects artwork not on display, has its own independent climate system and leak detection. The pieces in the vault were completely secure, he said.

“My concern was that water got into the elevator shaft at the first floor and I was concerned for public safety,” Workman said.

The elevators were fine, but the conditions in McKnight were worse than the museum.

Immediately following the closing of the museum and the relocation of the reception, several students began contacting local media outlets and airing their grievances on social media.

Caitlin Langdon posted a screenshot of a text message she sent to KAKE-TV around 11 p.m., Friday on Facebook. By Sunday, 165 people had shared it.

“How can you even attempt to bring more diverse people to campus, when you can’t even given (sic) them a suitable place to work and thrive?” Langdon wrote. 

Langdon said she contacted local news stations — including The Sunflower — to bring what she feels is a neglect of the art college to President John Bardo’s attention.

“Considering all of the flooding happening in and around the Wichita area, and the fact that innovation campus (sic) at Wichita state (sic) is well underway, maybe it would be nice to talk about how the arts are still going underfunded,” she wrote. 

Langdon said she’s in McKnight Hall, where she works in the office, all afternoon Monday through Thursday and that she has seen the problems in the art buildings on campus firsthand. 

“The windows are shot,” Langdon said. “We’ve always had crappy windows that need to be completely replaced. There’s roaches everywhere, I see at least one a day, and they’re the big ones, like at least the size of my thumb.”

Langdon said conditions in Henrion Hall, which the university is raising money to renovate, are far worse than McKnight. 

“The time and money these students spend to live out their dream — ruined by one building’s shoddy integrity,” she said of McKnight and Henrion Halls, where art students take the majority of their studio classes. 

“This is not the first time that McKnight has suffered water damage after a significant rain,” said Rodney Miller, Dean of the College of Fine Arts, in an email Saturday, “and, unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last.”

“There have been numerous attempts by Facilities to rectify this,” Miller said. “But the repairs have not proven to be a permanent solution. Obviously, this is a very frustrating for everyone, not the least of which for the Facilities personnel who have tried numerous times to correct it.

“To say I am not frustrated, indeed concerned, about this situation would be disingenuous. To say, however, that this is evidence that the arts are discriminated against at WSU would be patently untrue,” Miller continued. 

Miller cited the nearly $5 million the university has spent on maintenance, repairs and renovations to fine arts facilities in the last 15 years to show the university has been trying to fix the problems with the buildings.

Some art students said they wish the university would seek a more permanent solution to the poor conditions of the art buildings before continuing with other projects around campus. 

Melinda Sudbrink has been taking classes in McKnight Hall since 2012. During her freshman year, she said she started to notice water on the second floor of the building every time it would rain. Once, on her way to the restroom, she slipped on a puddle and fell on the hard, cement floor. 

“I had a good-sized bruise and was sore for a week or two,” Sudbrink said.

 “(The water) runs down the atrium into electric outlets and off the light fixtures.

“It’s a safety hazard.”

A painting and psychology major at WSU, Sudbrink said the flooding Friday night at the opening exhibit for the museum was the “final push.” 

“There was essentially a giant party going on as the school was leaking before everyone’s eyes,” Sudbrink said. 

Sudbrink took a cell phone video of the water leaking down the walls in McKnight Hall Friday night. She said it’s a problem she has been dealing with since she started at WSU. 

“It almost damaged my work,” Sudbrink said. “I had to move it.”

Sudbrink said her studio space has three places where it regularly leaks when it rains, which she called “manageable.” Friday, she said water poured into her working area from 10 to 15 different places. 

Langdon said the conditions art student have to work in at WSU is deplorable. 

“I’m not an art student, but getting the calls to the office phone about flooding and knowing there’s nothing I can do but call physical plant and get them a bucket is stomach-wrenching,” she said. 

Joe Kleinsasser, spokesman for the university, said the water was cleaned from the effected buildings Saturday. He said there was also flooding in Ahlberg Hall.

“The university will be assessing the overall impact of flooding on campus during the next few days and repair what’s required,” Kleinsasser said in an email. 

The problem in McKnight, university officials said, is the skylights in the roof of the building.

“I would encourage everyone not to judge too harshly based on a 100-year rain event,” Workman said. “With that said, it is time for a permanent solution to the skylight problem.”

Natasha Stephens, who was appointed WSUs Title IX coordinator in March 2016, is no longer listed in the universitys staff directory.

Title IX reaches out to students

Chance Swaim, News Editor September 20, 2016
When Wichita State hired Natasha Stephens as Title IX coordinator last February, she was told she was starting with a blank slate. “They told me I could do whatever I wanted -- within reason -- to make the WSU community more inclusive and more equitable,” Stephens said. “One of my goals is marketing and the other is to include students in discussions about policy.” Both of those goals came together Tuesday night in the Pike Room of the Rhatigan Student Center, where a group of about 15 students met for the first Title IX student forum this year to discuss what they want to accomplish. The Title IX campaign design was unveiled along with the slogan “We State United,” which Stephens plans to distribute in the form of stickers, buttons, posters, flyers and T-shirts to increase the visibility of Title IX on campus. The student forum provides Stephens with perspective, thoughts and feedback from students, something she said was missing from WSU prior to her arrival. “It’s important to have the university community involved,” Stephens said. “When you say ‘university community’ it really needs to be that -- it needs to include students. We all are around each other and we all should work together.” Stephens said she wanted to get a group of students -- graduate and undergraduate -- together to serve as student representation of Title IX. Wichita State has a Title IX committee, but it is comprised of only faculty and staff. She wanted to give students a voice, she said. “That’s what these forums are about,” Stephens said. “My hope is that they will be on-going and that people will bring their friends and be heard. This is a safe space where students can feel free to share their ideas.” Stephens has worked at schools across the country, up and down the east coast, in the Midwest, both public and private, and the first thing she noticed on her first tour of WSU’s campus was a lack of signage for Title IX.“How can we increase awareness when no one knows who or where we are or what we do?” Stephens said she remembered thinking.She decided to start a campaign, but she didn’t know what, exactly, a “Title IX campaign” would look like. So, she opened the competition to students, faculty and staff to see who could design the most fitting logo and slogan to market the campaign. At the Tuesday forum, students exchanged ideas that were added to a list started in the spring at the group’s first informal meeting. “What do we want to be?” Stephens asked. “What are some actions we can take?” Students responded with different ideas about bringing guest speakers to campus, holding an “empowerment summit” in the spring and creating a dialogue with different student organizations on campus. “Everyone had really good ideas,” WSU Student Advocate Zane May said. “One person had the idea to do case analyses for cases that happened at other campuses and get student perspectives for how those cases were handled and how we could handle them better here. I really liked that.” “We’re going to connect the campus to the community,” May said. “And the empowerment summit, if it comes through, it could be something very powerful that can be repeated in the future.” The empowerment summit, the forum decided, could be a conference style combination of different activities on campus and could involve participation with other regional universities. The Title IX student forums will be held bi-weekly all school year and is open to all Wichita State students. The next meeting date is yet to be determined. “Work in progress, work in progress,” Stephens said after the forum. “I’m so excited to see what this grows into.”
File photo - President John Bardo

Amid budget cuts, administrators’ salaries swell

Chance Swaim, News Editor September 20, 2016

(Originally Posted Tuesday, June 7, 2016 2:32 p.m.) In response to uncertain state funding from year to year, Wichita State has tied faculty salaries to enrollment numbers. With the exception of...

Jazz musician Bobby Watson performed at WSU Thursday. 

‘Ambiance in the air’: Bobby Watson performs at WSU

Andrew Linnabary September 20, 2016

Taking the stage with the Wichita State Jazz Band, alto saxophonist Bobby Watson jumped right into his first piece — only to promptly stop.“I forgot to tell a story,” Watson said before launching...

Trio racks up double-digit stats, volleyball sweeps first round

Grant Cohen September 16, 2016

SAN ANTONIO — Wichita State volleyball has relied heavily on their offense this season — posting a .293 average through their nonconference schedule. In the Shocker’s first five wins, they have hit...

Senior’s motivational book tackles life’s obstacles

Andrew Linnabary September 15, 2016

As an obstacle racer who has qualified for world championships twice, physical education senior Logan Harpool said he spent hours in a dark garage training by himself.His mom didn’t understand why he...

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