4 Features WWW.WSUSIGNPOST.COMWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2013

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Patrick Ramsay features editor

WSU Rugby Club invites all to join

Nearly nude Wildcats participate in Salt Lake’s Undiewear Run

Wasatch Savage

New Halloween attraction built on legendary cross site

What’s great about the WSU Snowboarding Club

BY SPENCER BOYCEfeatures reporter | The Signpost

BY SPENCER BOYCEfeatures reporter | The Signpost

GRAPHIC BY FELISHA LARSEN | THE SIGNPOST

The simple rules of rugby are “15 guys, 40-minute halves, one referee, no pads, no hel-mets, one goal . . . to win” — or so says the Weber State University Men’s Rugby Club website.

Johnathan Francis, a junior at WSU, has been playing rugby for 10 years and is now the club president.

“I picked it up while living in England and have loved it ever since,” Francis said. “My fa-vorite part of rugby is the brotherhood that is formed. There is just something about run-ning around and hit-ting each other that just forms a bond.”

Bastian Cowsert, WSU senior and team vice president, said he got involved with rugby be-cause of the movies.

“I thought it was a cool sport and I always wanted to play it,” he said.

Cowsert, who hails from Washington State University, said his old school did not have a lot of sports and was miss-ing rugby.

“I knew Weber had a team, and I thought it would be cool to play,” he said.

The origins of rugby are attributed to soccer player William Webb El-

lis. Stories say he picked up the soccer ball during a game and started run-ning with it. Over time, the shape of the ball and rules began to change and evolve into the mod-ern game of rugby.

“The first balls were m a d e w i t h l e a t h e r and a pig blad-der on the inside,” Cowsert said.

Rugby is starting to see a rise in popular-ity and membership at WSU. The current men’s rugby club consists of 30-40 members.

“Anybody can come out and play,” Cowsert said. “All you need is a mouth guard and cleats. We are always looking for people to come.”

Non-students can at-tend practices, but one needs to be a student to play in the games.

“It is really easygoing,” Cowsert said. “Right now it is open subs. Once Jan-uary hits, then we have a set 22 guys. The best player plays, and there are no politics involved. If we get more players, then we can form more team; the more the mer-rier.”

The rugby club is making a push to get WSU and the communi-ty involved, Francis said.

“The club now re-quires the team to put in a minimum of five hours of community service per player,” he said.

The club has a ser-vice project in the works. Members will wear their team shirts during ser-

vice projects to represent their

club and WSU.

“ R u g b y is just a fun sport, and

it is physi-cally as well

as mentally de-manding,” Francis said. “It will also teach you discipline, build confi-dence and team spirit. When we play, we hit hard, we run fast and we strive for victory, but as soon as the final whistle blows, we leave it all on the field and throw our arms around the guys next to us as though we had been best friends forever.”

Those interested in playing rugby can at-tend practice at 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thurs-days at the lower quad in front of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Building. No experience is required. More infor-mation is available on the club’s website, www.weber.edu/menrugby.

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Haunted Kay’s Cross has been shrouded in myth and mystery for more than 70 years. As this October unfolds, the secrets of the cross will be divulged to any-one who enters the haunted woods sur-rounding what remains of the cross that was left in ruins after a puzzling explosion in 1992.

With a history dating back to the 1940s, no-body really knows why the cross was erected, who erected it or who bombed it in 1992.

Jared Peterson, the mastermind behind the

Haunted Kay’s Cross at-traction, said he has al-ways wanted to create a haunted house there.

“We have kicked so many people off of this private property in the past that we decided it would be the perfect place for a spook alley,” Peterson said.

Kay’s Cross was a site for youth to party and to scare each other with the many stories.

“A lot of pretty rough people would come down here, and they started devil-worshipping,” Pe-terson said. “It scared a lot of the surrounding neighbors. The biggest myth is that a farmer killed his wife and fam-

ily and buried his family near the cross and hung himself.”

This story has spun off into numerous other versions. Weber State University alumnus Adam Dayton recounted the most popular story he remembers from high school.

“A farmer went crazy one evening, murder-ing seven of his wives and burying them un-der the cross and in and around the abandoned vehicles.” Dayton said the farmer met an ugly demise, hanging himself in a tree nearby.

“We tried in years

See KAY’S CROSS page 9

See UNDIEWEAR page 8

BY PATRICK RAMSAYfeatures editor | The Signpost

Nearly 1,200 Utahns stripped down to their undies on Sunday in downtown Salt Lake City for the Utah Undiewear Run to protest the up-tight attitude associated with much of conserva-tive Utah. Runners were encouraged to write laws and organizations on their bodies that they wanted to bring atten-tion to as they ran from the Salt Lake City Li-brary, up State Street, around the Utah Capitol Building and back to the library.

“I see Utah as very,

very conservative,” said Francisco Lopez, an ed-ucation junior at WSU who participated in the Undiewear Run. “It’s in-teresting because it’s a community that doesn’t want big government, but when it comes to things like gay marriage and when it comes to li-quor . . . I feel like they want the government more involved in that sense.”

The conservative na-ture of Utah is often as-sociated with the large population of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

PHOTO BY TYLER BROWN | THE SIGNPOST

Participants at the Utah Undiewear Run in Salt Lake City run in their underwear. The run took place on Sunday, starting and ending at the Salt Lake Library.

PATRICKRAMSAY

ºThe Signpost

columnist

See SAVAGE page 9

Here at Weber State University, we are blessed with a couple things that people seem to oftentimes overlook. First, we live in one of the most incredible mountain towns in the country. Our Wasatch Front is home to world-renowned ski and snow-board resorts, and we get to live at its foot. This brings me to my second point: We have clubs full of people getting together to share a com-mon interest. Among these clubs is the Snow-boarding Club, which is essentially a combina-

tion of two already great things about being a Wildcat: snowboarding and the people who love doing it.

Chase Burch, the president of the WSU Snowboarding Club, has been snowboarding for 12 years.

“I started snowboard-ing because, (in) the town I grew up in, there

8 WWW.WSUSIGNPOST.COMWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2013 THE SIGNPOST

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PHOTOS BY TYLER BROWN | THE SIGNPOST

Various runners jog in their underwear during the Utah Undiewear Run. Many participants wrote and drew on their bodies to call attention to certain laws. The event was held on Sunday in Salt Lake City.

UNDIEWEAR continued from page 4

place changed a couple of different times before it settled on Oct. 6. The last, sudden change of date led many to believe it was an intentional change, meant to send a message

to the group of General Conference-goers who would be in downtown Salt Lake City on the same day.

“The run is not a pro-test against the LDS

church whatsoever,” said Nate Porter, WSU alum-nus and founder of the event.

Due to some trade-mark issues, the name of the run had to be changed from the Utah Undie Run to the Utah Undie-wear Run. The organiza-tion with the trademark rights to “Undie Run” sent cease-and-desist letters to all of the sponsors of the event, causing them to retract their sponsor-ship; none of them want-ed to risk it legally. This, along with the matter of getting the proper per-mits, led to the eventual rescheduling of the event.

Porter said the date was just a coincidence in scheduling. He also said the strict conservative outlook in Utah is hurting tourism and alienating some of its citizens.

“The whole point of this is we’re not nearly as uptight as people think — especially Salt Lake,” said WSU alumnus and for-mer X96 DJ Andy Pants. “We have a pretty good bar scene, good music scene, and yeah, we’re doing pretty well here. I don’t think the rest of the nation really realizes that.”

Along with making a political statement,

many runners literally donated the clothes off their backs. With a cold winter fast approaching, the importance of getting warm clothes onto those less fortunate is an issue the Utah Undiewear Run seeks to address. Porter said the run collected

nearly 7,000 articles of clothing to donate to the local homeless shelters. He said people didn’t just donate the clothes they were wearing, but came with bags of additional clothes to donate.

Although the annual homeless Point in Time Count conducted annu-

ally in Utah shows the homeless population has decreased by about 9 per-cent since 2012, Utah still has approximately 15,093 individuals deemed homeless.

“I think it’s great,” said Ron Voshell, clothed by-stander and Salt Lake City resident, about the event. “I think it just brings everybody out, kind of shows a little diversity in a way.”

Rebecca Palmer, for-mer WSU student and Undie Runner, shared her way of addressing the nerves that may be onset by running through a city in skivvies: “I have a Ninja Turtle mask, actually.”

Palmer agreed with the purpose of the run. “Utah needs to loosen up. I think that there’s a lot of good here . . . but there’s a lot of fear and a lot of self-censorship and uncom-fortableness with people. It’s better to just love each other, love your body.”

Among the crowd of nearly nude runners, sev-eral clothed Utahns with clipboards were register-ing runners to vote. A col-lective voice among the runners seemed to echo a desire for recognition, di-versity and equality.

Saints in the state. The weekend of Oct.

6 also happened to be the same weekend as the 181st Annual LDS Gen-eral Conference. The date when the run was to take

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“The whole point of this is we’re not nearly

as uptight as people think — especially Salt

Lake. . . . I don’t think the rest of the nation really realizes that.”

ANDY PANTSWSU alumnus