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Coyotes hunt for heat Students who reside off-campus deal with cold temperatures Rachel Newville
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Rachel.Newville@coyotes.usd.edu
xtremely cold temperatures canceled class Tuesday and Wednesday, and some USD students are dealing with the chill in their off-campus homes. Mary Wester, a senior nursing major, lived in a cold house in town two years ago and said they had to get creative to keep their space warm when their heater broke. “It got down to 50 (degrees). The house was just really old and the landlord had it fixed within three days,” Wester said, “My roommates and I covered our windows and we turned the oven on to try and heat it up a little.” Wester said her and her roommates would wear two sweatshirts at once just to keep warm. Julia Noah, a double major in health sciences and psychology, said her three-story home is difficult to warm due to its size. “The first level is really cold. My roommate who lives on the first floor uses six blankets and has worn gloves to bed. The second level is pretty warm because heat rises, and the third is freezing,” she said. “We try to turn up the heat if it gets super cold,
See COLD, Page A3
Peyton Beyers I The Volante
Students who live off-campus often have trouble keeping their homes warm during the winter months.
Noem may face challenges as South Dakota’s first female governor Lexi Kerzman
37%
19%
31%
13%
Studying
Drinking
Netflix
Sleeping
* As of 10 p.m. Tuesday night, 435 Twitter users voted in a poll asking what they planned to do on their days off.
Lexi.Kerzman@coyotes.usd.edu
South Dakotans elected the state’s first female governor, Kristi Noem, last November. Noem served in the U.S. House of Representatives for South Dakota before she was elected governor. Although Noem has experience within South Dakota politics, some women said there is still fear she will not be taken seriously as a leader because of her gender and political party. Julie Hellwege, USD professor of American politics, said Noem will face issues earning respect as a leader because of the idea that women are more content in roles of less power and authority. “(A governor) is a single person making decisions and that is typically seen as a very male-dominated arena of politics,” she said. “Becoming governor is a much greater fear than becoming a member of Congress because Congress is a (collaborative) body and there is more talking and more people working together. That is stereotypically deemed more appropriate for women than the governorship.” Although this election saw an increase in women elected to state legislatures across the nation, Hellwege said there is still a lack of diversity within the female representation. “I think just saying we have more women is not enough. We need to have more diversity among the women. We need to have more women of color, more Native American women, we need to have more conservative women,” Hellwege said. Being conservative and female can cause challenges for women in politics in general, but specifically, in leadership positions, Hellwege said. “Conservative, traditional religious values do often create a hierarchical relationship
Twitter Poll Results
Vermillion classes canceled Tuesday and Wednesday Kelli Susemihl
Kelli.Susemihl@coyotes.usd.edu
Lexi Kerzman I The Volante
Gov. Kristi Noem spoke about plans for her term at a press conference at Newspaper Day in Pierre last Thursday.
or at the very least segregation between men and women,” Hellwege said. “Either there is a hierarchical relationship where the man is supreme to the woman —usually wife— or at least they are expected to have different influences, where men do public work and women do private work only.” Amber Hulse, a sophomore political science major, and Student Government Association member said through working on campaigns this election year, she has seen first hand the discrimination women face in politics. “I didn’t work on Kristi Noem’s campaign, but just being around campaigns, one
of the people that worked for her campaign called someone and asked if Kristi Noem had his support. The man said he had never voted for a Democrat in his life, but he would vote for a man before he would ever vote for a woman to be our governor,” Hulse said. “That is still a stigma that is still out there, that is someone who really thinks that women should not have leadership positions.” The Volante traveled to Pierre, S.D. for Newspaper Day and had the chance to speak to Noem. She said her main goal is to focus on family and building family relationships while in office. “For me, it’s really about
strengthening families and helping people,” Noem said. “We do a lot of things right in South Dakota, we’re pretty fiscally right, we make good decisions, I think the challenges that we do face are because of the breakdown of a family. We need to take better care of people.” Noem continues to post stories of her own family life online. Hulse said while Noem is trying to make herself seem relatable in these social media posts, it may be hurting her representation as a strong female leader. “She has been posting a lot of different videos of herself See NOEM, Page A3
USD classes were canceled on the Vermillion campus from 8 a.m. Tuesday until 8 a.m. Thursday. Classes were canceled due to the forecasted weather conditions of extremely cold temperatures and a severe wind chill warning. Wind chill temperatures were forecasted to drop down to -39 degrees on Tuesday night and -40 degrees on Wednesday, according to an email sent to students from University Relations. Southeastern South Dakota was declared to be in a wind chill warning both Tuesday and Wednesday. These frigid temperatures could lead to frostbite, hypothermia or death when exposed for even a brief period of time. “Stay safe. Stay warm. Stay home, Yotes,” Sheila Gestring, university president, tweeted Tuesday morning. Other schools in the region also called off school due to the temperatures, including South Dakota State University, Northern State University and Morningside College in Sioux City. Before the cancellation was announced, USD students took to social media to ask USD administration to consider safety as a factor in the cancellation decision. A USD student also started an online petition asking the administration to cancel classes, which received almost five thousand signatures as of Tuesday night.