collegian kansas
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state
thursday, april 1, 2010
www.kstatecollegian.com
Vol. 115 | No. 128
Making the Most of It
SGA
Current senators hold final meeting Danny Davis | Collegian
Tommy Theis | Collegian
Kevin Saunders talks about his experience in a grain elevator explosion, where he was thrown 300 feet over a two-story building and barely survived.
Saunders shares experiences to motivate others Austin Enns | Collegian “Out of the million things I could do, I can do 990,000,” said Kevin Saunders, KState graduate and motivational speaker. “I focused on the 10,000 things I couldn’t do, and that let the depression and pity pull me down. The more I got around the better I felt.” Saunders has won an Olympic gold medal, and has even been in a movie with Tom Cruise. Saunders is also paralyzed from the waist down. On Wednesday night, Saunders spoke in the K-State Student Union Ballroom as part of the Healthy Decisions Wild Wellness Week and Disability Awareness Week. Wellness in all aspects of one’s life was the theme of the speech, and Saunders tried to convey this by explaining how he is using his second chance in life to try to make a difference in the world. Ashley Wagner, senior in psychology, said she enjoyed learning about Saunders’s life.
“I really like that he’s very motivated and willing to talk about his disability,” Wagner said. Saunders’s life changed two days after he started working as a Federal Inspector for the USDA at a grain elevator. In one of the worst grain elevator explosions in Texas history, Saunders lost the use of his legs. He talked about when he was near death, he was taken to a hospital on a door in the back of a station wagon by a paramedic who refused to give up on him. In the hospital, Saunders could hear the doctors commenting on how he wasn’t going to make it. But he did. During his recovery, Saunders fell into a depression. His attitude changed after he met a painter named Mique Davis who was paralyzed from the neck down. Davis was able to enjoy activities, like painting with a paintbrush clenched between his teeth, and that inspired Saunders. A turning point in Saunders’s life was when he participated in his first 10k race in a wheel chair. Even though he was woefully
unprepared with a hospital wheel chair and thin gloves, he was able to get within sight of the finish line before race officials physically forced him off the course. This event served as a catalyst for change in his life. Saunders started working toward a balanced and successful life by making goals. Besides winning an Olympic medal in the 1988 games, Saunders took a cross-country trip from Michigan to Texas on his wheel chair to raise awareness for obesity. He was a motivational coach for the K-State football team for 14 years and was the first disabled person named to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. Rachel Cunningham, junior in public relations and marketing and co-chair for the Healthy Decisions Event Planning Committee, said she found the lecture very inspirational. “I think the message was to just keep trying,” Cunningham said. “Even after graduation, when you think everything is settled, to just keep setting goals in your life.”
Student Senate will hold its final meeting for the 2009-2010 term of senators tonight. Next week, the 2010-2011 senate will hold its first meeting. Several allocations are on the agenda for the meeting that were remaining from last week’s agenda. Among these, the senate will vote on a $500 allocation to Fair Trade Advocates. The group is attending the Fair Trade Futures Conference in Boston. The conference occurs once every five years and the organization will be sending five members to it. Another allocation to be voted on will provide $1000 to the Student Alumni Board to attend an annual conference in Kansas City. According to the bill, they will “learn about student recruitment techniques.” Ten members from the board will be attending the conference. The Senate will also vote on a bill providing emergency funding for the KState Student Union. The Union approached the Privilege Fee Committee to request an emergency allocation to repair the roof in the courtyard. It seeks to spend $55,000 from it’s reserve account and requests $100,000 additional funding which will come for the committee’s emergency allocation account. The estimated cost of the repair is $154,950. Senate will be meeting at an earlier time tonight, at 6 p.m. Meetings are held in the Big 12 Room of the Union.
Black Jew Dialogues cast humor over race and intolerance Danny Davis | Collegian The nationally acclaimed comedy act, the Black Jew Dialogues, performed yesterday evening at the K-State Student Union. Sponsored by the Diversity Programming Council, the show featured Ron Jones as the Black and Larry Jay Tish as the Jew. Jones opened the show by commenting on K-State sports. He said that he would have liked to have seen the Wildcats in the Final Four, but it was a great season anyway. Tish was quick to add that the Kansas Jayhawks were eliminated first, prompting applause from the audience. The duo’s disclaimer at the beginning of the show accurately represented how it would go the rest of the night. They warned the audience that there would provocative language. “We know it’s out there, people think it, people say it,” Jones said. “Let’s get it out in the open. Don’t get caught up in the words, get caught up in the message.” For the show, the comedians advised the audience to turn off their bias, hatred, and preconceived notions. To illustrate these thoughts, they showed a video of students, some from K-State, who were interviewed by the comedians’ puppets. One of them, a Mexican, was asked what he had heard people thought about Mexicans in the United States. He replied that people said they were lazy and stealing all the low class jobs. That is a contradiction pointed out one of the puppets. They are lazy, but they are stealing all the jobs, he reflected. That kind of humor was what Eric Houston, senior in agribusiness, enjoyed about the show. They confronted serious
issues in a lighthearted manner, he said. On stage, the comedians remarked how both Jewish and Blacks are minorities, have lived in ghettos, and have been slaves from Africa. Tish said that since Egypt is part of Africa, the Jews were also slaves from Africa in Biblical times. “Aw hell no,” Jones said. “Don’t go pulling that North technicality.” The point they were trying to emphasize was that to cope with conditions in America, they must deal with their past. Tish said that Jews use food to help endure the suffering and Jones said that blacks use music. Often throughout the performance, Tish commented that he was hungry or thinking about food. One skit within the act featured the men dressed as grandmothers preparing to go to a picnic. They sat down at a distance from each other. Tish avoided Jones because he is a black woman. “I was taught to look at people as who they are and what they’ve done,” Jones said. But Tish replied that all she ever has seen on the news were black people and they mugged her grandson. Jones said that they never show hardworking black people on the news. The two grandmothers wind up befriending one another, dancing and trading picnic baskets. Dressed back as their normal selves, Jones and Tish had a discussion on guilt and what it is like living in America as a black and a Jew. Tish asks Jones to imagine he’s with another woman while his wife is sleeping beside him. And she wakes up. “Oh man that’s some Tiger Woods s---,” Jones said. That is how the guilt feels being Jewish, Tish said, feeling guilty for everything.
Tommy Theis | Collegian
Larry Jay Tish, “The Jew,” listens to Ron Jones, “The Black,” while Jones complains about the food at Tish’s bar mitzvah. The comedy act works to break down stereotypes that stem from fear. As for being black, Jones offered his own perspective on life in America. “Imagine you’re only capable of being someone’s athlete, or a clown, or being dangerous, that you’re totally driven by your sexual urges and that ultimately you’re going to f--- up and wind up in jail,” he said. “That’s what black people have to deal with in America.” The two said that much of the perception about the minorities in America are due to fear and stereotypes - called “feareotypes.” Any wrong that a black or Jew commit affects the image of the whole
group, they said. “I just wish [America] would realize there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Jones said. “There’s nothing to fear.” They described several situations in which fear controls thoughts of minorities. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Muslims on airplanes are subject to fear or hatred. Also, driving in cities and having black people walk towards a persons car usually prompts them to lock their car doors out of fear.
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