Legislative task force discusses the future of education in Utah

A task force of members of the Utah Legislature paid campus a visit on Tues-day. Meeting to talk about the future of education, the Legislative Task Force on Education in Utah was sponsored by the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics.

The representatives met for a discussion with Speaker Rebecca Lockhart, Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, Sen. Ste-phen Urquhart, Sen. Gene Davis and Rep. Francis Gib-son, with Nolan Karras of the Walker Institute’s board of directors acting as mod-erator for the panel.

“One of the purposes of our education task force (was to) talk about where education needs to go in the next 10 years,” Nieder-hauser said. “Legislatures by nature are reactive. They tend to kick the can down the road . . . but we have tried to do more planning, more long-term, but a lot more work needs to be

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WEBER STATE UNIVERSITY

VOL 84 ISSUE 41WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2013

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Women’s soccerclaims Big SkyChampionship

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One of the strongest storms in recorded history hits Philippines

SOURCE: MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE

SOURCE: MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE

SOURCE: MCCLATCHY TRIBUNE

Super Typhoon Haiyan leveled buildings, flooded islands and left disaster in its wake. The storm ravaged the Philippines and caused more than $1,063,000 in damages to infrastructure and agriculture from six re-gions. Weber State University students with friends and family in the Philippines are be-ginning fundraising efforts.

BY ROSIE GERRISHasst. news editor | The Signpost

BY ROSIE GERRISHasst. news editor | The Signpost

Winds going 195 mph left an estimated 2,000-2,500 dead in the Philippines after Super Typhoon Haiyan lev-eled buildings, flooded islands and left disaster in its wake. Nicknamed Super Typhoon Yolanda by locals, Filipino Pres-ident Benigno Aquino

III has reported that the initial projection of 10,000 may be “too high,” stating that the death toll is likely lower.

With the storm over-taking much of the is-land, food shortages, power interruptions and a lack of clean wa-ter continue to pose threats to survivors of the storm.

Originally hitting the

Philippines on Nov. 8, the storm passed out of Filipino borders yes-terday at 10 a.m. local time. According to of-ficial Filipino govern-ment record, there has been a total of 4,343 hu-man casualties, includ-ing 1,774 dead, 2,487 injured and 82 missing. The affected population goes far beyond that, with 6,937,229 people

in 39 provinces among them. Aquino declared a National State of Calam-ity on Monday, specifi-cally affecting the areas of Samar, Leyte, Cebu, Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan and Palawan.

Of 41,176 houses dam-aged, 51 percent were completely destroyed. A total of 46199523.48

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done in that area.”Lockhart agreed. “One

of the motivations behind this task force is what really is the role of the legislature, what is the role of the state board, what is the role of all of these organizations in this system?”

Also presenting at the fo-rum was former Utah Gov. Olene S. Walker. “All of you that are here because you care about your commu-nity and your school, thank you,” Walker said. “We are talking about an issue that is so dear to my heart: edu-cation. The Walker Institute has done things that are re-ally important to students . . . Thanks (to) the good work from a lot of people, we have openly doubled (the number of legislative interns from Weber State) for this coming year.”

Carol McNamara, Walk-er Institute director, said she was grateful to the state legislature for the expan-sion of the internship pro-gram that it made possible.

Social work students present diversity research to presidentBY RAYCHEL JOHNSONeditor-in-chief | The Signpost

Conducting research — check. Presenting said research at sympo-sium — check. Present-ing research to President Charles Wight — check. Publishing research in scientific journal — al-most check.

Six students, one of which has already grad-uated from Weber State University, spent their 2013 spring semester in a hybrid social work course that was half re-search and half statis-tics. After conducting and concluding their research on diversity at WSU last spring, the

next step was to present their data to Wight and Adrienne Andrews, the special assistant to the president for diversity.

Bright and early last Thursday morning, these students, along with their mentor and professor Kerry Kenne-dy, finally got to present their findings.

Their study, entitled “Wildcat Nation: Open to Diversity?”, conclud-ed that although stu-dents at WSU are open to diversity, most have little experience with it. Also, students who iden-tify with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

See RESEARCH page 5

WWII collection comes to WSUBY SPENCER BOYCEfeatures reporter | The Signpost

Nathan Cragun, Benjamin Johnson and Rodney Bailey came to Weber State University equipped with a wide collection of World War II memorabilia to educate Wildcats and observe Veterans Day.

PHOTO BY PATRICK RAMSAY | THE SIGNPOST

Last week, Weber State University hon-ored Veterans Day a bit early. Displayed in the Shepherd Union Atrium were actual items from World War II collections, including weaponry, uniforms and grenade launchers.

Nathan Cragun and Benjamin Johnson have jointly collected World War II memorabilia since they were 16.

Cragun, a WSU stu-dent, said he finds joy in collecting and sharing

his things with the pub-lic.

“There is the passion for collecting mixed in with the passion of his-tory and the passion to share that history with other people,” Cragun said. “That is why we are here today.”

Both Cragun and Johnson have experi-ence sharing their col-lectibles and teach-ing history. They have shown off their collec-tion to audiences at We-ber High School for the past seven years.

Cragun was raised in an Air Force family and

has been interested in all things military since his childhood. He and Johnson got into collect-ing when they wanted to make their own little versions of war movies.

“As we learned more about the stories of vet-erans — what they wore, what they used — that passion created a whole other passion, which is understanding what they did, what they went through and their sto-ries,” Cragun said.

Through their col-lection, many doors

WSU’s globetrotting nurse shares experiences

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‘This is an unfortunate set of circumstances,’ I started zooming out further and further to see at what level I thought there would be the most impact.”

Cadman wanted to do something sustainable. She said a lot of the one- or two-week medical mis-sions often do more harm than good.

“I wanted to find a way to address global health is-sues in a way that was sus-tainable. As I went further and further out, I thought what they need is their own health workers, and in order to have their own health workers, they need a better education system. It just kept zooming out until it got to the point where I trained indigenous health workers in rural regions of developing countries.”

Cadman said one of her favorite experiences was her time in Guatemala. She could go back to the same communities and see them implementing the training and utilizing the informa-tion to better the condi-tions in their community.

In terms of the more intense situations, Cad-

man said, “I saw an exor-cism while I was in Nepal. Nothing in medical school prepares you for witness-ing an exorcism. There was no way I could sit there and say, ‘Well, my research says that an exorcism is not valid’ when they could say, like, 2,500 years of history says it is.”

Cadman’s adventures aren’t always geared toward research. She said many of her bungee-jumping and skydiving experiences have also helped shape her views on travel.

She plans to leave Dec. 19 to French Guiana. From there, she will go down the Amazon River to Manaus, then back to the U.S. “I’ll be spending a few weeks on the Amazon. That is not research-related. That one’s just for fun.”

Cadman’s other future plans include Ghana in the summer of 2014, and a bike ride across the country.

For many students, rais-ing funds to go abroad is the largest obstacle, but Cadman said there are op-tions for these students. She has students and friends who hosted spa-

Kathleen Cadman holds up a sign in Israel to celebrate it being her 100th country visited.SOURCE: KATHLEEN CADMAN

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ghetti dinners and showed informational videos about where they were going and had people contribute money that way.

Cadman said the most important part of taking trips is planning. “Trips look expensive, but they’re

The Pokemon Com-pany is bringing back important characters from the old cartoon and from the Game Boy version.

Game Vault owner Joe Gabber said he was pleased with the game.

“The Pokemon Com-pany incorporated some old things that I love, which is combining the old version with the new one.”

Gabber said he most-ly liked the style of Pokemon when he was little, but also liked how the Pokemon have dif-ferent abilities. In the games, every Pokemon

POKEMON continued from page 4

has its own abilities and its own style of bat-tling against others. The Pokemon Company up-dated the new games to 3-D to make them more realistic.

“I love that the game is more of a 3-D look,” Gabber said. “The up-grade of the game itself looks pretty nice.”

Weber State Universi-ty freshman Jesse John-son said he thinks the game looks great, but they keep adding more Pokemon he’s not famil-iar with.

“I like the older ver-sions of the Pokemon games because we did

SOURCE: POKEMON.COM

have opened for the two.“We have met some re-

ally neat people,” Cragun said. “We participated in the ‘Saints and Soldiers’ film, in multiple parades and many displays hon-oring famous veterans.”

Johnson, a self-pro-claimed “collecting whore,” has collections ranging from Marine memorabilia to his very

own Willy’s Military Jeep. Johnson became inter-ested when he found out his grandfather served in World War II.

“I got hold of his uni-forms, and that kicked it off for me,” said Johnson of his collecting.

Johnson specializes in the “29th infantry” memorabilia dating back to the Civil War. He said

that, at the time, the in-fantry had soldiers fight-ing for the North as well as the South.

Cragun and Johnson have made many friends over the last several years through their hobby. Johnson was able to meet his heroes on a trip to Germany, some of whom stormed the beaches on V-Day.

WWII continued from front

really not that horrible if you just budget your mon-ey wisely. The money is there if you plan it out right.”

Cadman encourages all students to go abroad and experience the world.

“Every place that you go,

you learn more about other cultures and other com-munities, but you learn so much more about yourself. That’s part of what I really enjoy. Above the people and the cultures and the food is learning something new about myself as well.

not have to worry about all these new things they keep adding to the games,” he said. “But at the same time, I am excited for the game release because I have been waiting for a long time (for it) to come out.”

Johnson agreed with the store owners about the graphics in the new game. “And I also like that it is in 3-D too, be-cause it makes easier to understand my sur-roundings.”

“We run into other people like us, exchange information, and collect and grow,” Johnson said.

Many students took advantage of the display to observe the collection, pick up and touch the items, ask questions and learn more about the his-tory.

“We wear and use ev-erything you see here,”

Johnson said. “We go out and shoot this stuff and play with this stuff. It is meant to be used and worked with and shown to people.”

Jamie Munson, a WSU sophomore, said he re-ally enjoyed this philoso-phy and had a great time getting such an up-close-and-personal view of the items being displayed.

“My head is explod-ing in awesome seeing all of this,” Munson said. “I have never been this close. It is always behind glass.”

Munson said that he and his grandparents of-ten “geek out” over mili-tary ideas and memora-bilia.

“I have been into this stuff since I was old

enough to know what’s up,” he said. “I hope to have my own collection one day down the line.”

Cragun said he likes to promote the positive sides of the war.

“Sadly, in this day and age, the history, espe-cially military history, is being forgotten,” he said. “People look at wars (and) focus on the bad. They don’t understand the inventions and the technological advance-ments that have hap-pened because of it. I mean, war isn’t a good thing, but if we are go-ing to have it, we might as well look at the bright side of it.”

I think self-discovery is highly underrated.”

As Cadman simply put it, “In my mind, there’s two types of countries: those I’ve already been to, and those I haven’t been to yet.”

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