THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2019 • VOL. 13, ISS. 52
THESUNFLOWER.COM
WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY’S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1896.
hammock time
RSC hammocks offer semester-end respite KHÁNH NGUYỄN/THE SUNFLOWER
Student Body Vice President Matt Madden and Student Advocate Kitrina Miller were the only executive cabinet members present at Wednesday’s Student Government Association meeting.
SGA passes amendment to allow individual funding requests over the summer BY ANDREW LINNABARY
Student Government Association passed an amendment Wednesday that will allow individual funding requests to be made over the summer. “This I feel like is a much more equitable way of doing summer travel,” Fine Arts Senator Haley Ensz said. Ensz has been in SGA three sessions, she said, and she was happy to see the change. Graduate Senator Carolyn Fugit said summer conferences can be essential to graduate students. “We don’t get scholarships and we don’t get grants, so we rely on student jobs,” Fugit said. “Those do not pay very well. In order to really pursue our careers, we need to go to conferences. Some of those are over the summer.
“As the graduate student senator, I know we really need this.” The Student Senate passed the amendment with a majority vote. Vice President Matt Madden said the budget and finance committee took a look at the funding process to figure out how SGA funding allocations could work better in the future, which led them to make the change to allow summer funding for individual requests. Madden said the change fixes a “critical issue” in the funding system. Seventeen senators were at Wednesday’s meeting. Two members of the cabinet, Madden and Student Advocate Katrina Miller, were in attendance. President Shelby Rowell, Treasurer Stella Yang, and Director of Public Relations Andrew Martin had other commitments.
ANDREW LINNABARY/THE SUNFLOWER
Workforce leadership junior Jordan Brown relaxes in a hammock outside the Rhatigan Student Center Wednesday. The hammocks were placed outside the RSC this week.
Did WSU’s ‘Enough is Enough’ campaign do enough for Fairmount? BY AUDREY KORTE
The Kansas Health Foundation gave Wichita State a quarter of a million dollars to use on community engagement with Fairmount after the brutal rape and murder of Letitia Davis. For three years, WSU went full steam ahead on community development and research, but that grant money ran out in 2018. Since then, WSU’s involvement with Fairmount seems to have tapered off. Since the summer of 2018, WSU has engaged in Fairmount primarily through a healthy initiatives Win The Day grant, also funded by the Kansas Health Foundation. That money runs out in the fall, and the future of WSU’s Fairmount community involvement remains uncertain. Wichita State launched the “Enough is Enough” campaign in the wake of the November 2014 murder. Darryl Carrington, an adult learner at WSU and president of the Fairmount Neighborhood Association at the time, was hired to head community relations between the university and Fairmount. Carrington worked for WSU on the resulting programs and outreach activities for 30 months. Fast-forward to 2019 and it appears WSU’s involvement in Fairmount is waning. Originally from Compton, California, Carrington and his wife, Cassandra, live in the Fairmount neighborhood. When the two were traveling from California to South Carolina in 2005, Cassandra wanted to stop in Wichita to see her mother. During that visit, Cassandra learned that she had a tumor and needed emergency surgery. They stayed in Wichita for treatment. Darryl Carrington started working for the physical plant on WSU’s campus. He also enrolled at WSU
EDUARDO CASTILLO/THE SUNFLOWER
Darryl Carrington was hired by WSU to head community relations between the university and Fairmount residents for the Enough is Enough campaign.
to finish his bachelor’s degree and got involved on campus. “I became a [student] senator. And I started advocating in Topeka for increased wages and stuff like that on behalf of the physical plant employees,” Carrington said. He also encouraged WSU to get involved with Fairmount, well before the Enough is Enough campaign kicked off. “I was engaged. I was trying to get Wichita State to bring some of their resources across 17th Street, south of 17th Street, like the performing arts, their stage, and their equipment,” Carrington said. Then the Davis rape and murder happened. Suddenly, WSU became interested in engaging with Fairmount in a new way with vigor. Late President John Bardo addressed this in a December 4, 2014 message to the community. “Enough is enough. We all felt the horror when Letitia Davis was brutally assaulted in Fairmount Park and later died from her injuries. In the months before that, there were reports of assaults, car break-ins and other crimes in the area south of
“I ELECTED MYSELF. I THOUGHT, I DON’T WANT TO SIT ON MY HANDS AND WATCH SOMEBODY WHO DOESN’T LIVE IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD GET THIS JOB.” —Darryl Carrington, Fairmount advocate
campus,” Bardo wrote. “Yes, we live in the largest city in the state, and yes, crime will happen. But, enough is enough. We’ve got to fix this and it’s time. “We can, and will, do more.” Bardo also wrote that he had asked then Director of the Office of Community Engagement Ted Ayres to head the Enough is Enough task force, “to focus on creating safe, economically vibrant neighborhoods near campus.” THE KANSAS HEALTH FOUNDATION GRANT
Meanwhile, Carrington was also working on behalf of the Fairmount community. Carrington said he played a role in securing the $250,000 Kansas Health Foundation (KHF) grant under the direction of Misty Bruckner, director of WSU’s
Public Policy and Management Center (PPMC). Carrington was a lecturer at WSU at the time, leading a class called Art and Community Engagement. “Misty just asked me if I could put together a video to go along with the grant, which I did with the help of my students in the class,” Carrington said. He went around with a camera and interviewed members of the community. One of the stories he captured was that of a young couple who had moved to Fairmount because it was close to campus so the father of the family could go to school. The first night their newborn slept in a crib, they experienced a drive-by shooting. Carrington captured their story and others. He submitted his video along with the grant application. “One of the next things I know, I’m in the community garden, and Misty calls me and says, we got the grant,” Carrington said. SERVING THE COMMUNITY AND UNIVERSITY
Carrington said when he saw the university’s job posting to head community relations between WSU and Fairmount, he knew he should apply. “I elected myself,” Carrington said. “I thought, I don’t want to sit on my hands and watch somebody who doesn’t live in this neighborhood get this job.” Ayres told Carrington that the decision to hire him was unanimous. Carrington and Ayres shared a goal with the Kansas Health Foundation of helping community members identify what needed to change and letting them take the initiative. “The only directive that we got from the Kansas Health Foundation, the only one
directive was that whatever the solution, it had to be organic — it had to be community-driven,” Carrington said. Bruckner said the KHF had a very prescribed process that it wanted WSU to follow as a grant recipient. “They were trying to create a learning environment,” Bruckner said. “It was very much based on the charrette process.” EVERYBODY ON BOARD
The KHF hosted a charrette in Fairmount Park. Charette is french for “an intense period of planning and activity.” “It’s an old French term that basically means, ‘If you don’t get on board, you’re going to get left behind,’” Carrington said. “My job immediately became, ‘How do I get all the voices heard,’ you know? ‘How do we get everybody corralled?’” Carrington said the charette was an important opportunity to mobilize the community. “The university fed us. I invited neighbors,” Carrington said. “Then, we walked around the corner to talk about it in the Fairmount church.” Over 100 people filled the basement of the Fairmount United Church of Christ. The KHF worked on coordinating all those voices by hiring a consultant from California to gather information that people were bringing to the table, and come up with a consensus, Carrington said. The next day, the group gathered in Fairmount Park again. “It was kind of like a check, double check, re-check,” Carrington said. “‘Hey, did we hear this? Is this what we heard?’” SEE MORE ONLINE AT THESUNFLOWER.COM
INSIDE
BEST SANDWICH IN ICT
‘GAME OF THRONES’
OLYMPIC EXPERTISE
Who do students think Wichita State’s next president should be?
Bocco’s Deli is a hidden gem for students in need of a new lunch destination.
Season 8’s reunion-ridden premiere doesn’t live up to expectations.
Coach Mark Lewis is the only man who has bowled for the U.S. Olympic Team.
OPINION • PAGE 2
CULTURE • PAGE 3
CULTURE • PAGE 3
SPORTS • PAGE 4
SHOCKER STREET SPEAK