Monday, August 28, 2023
Cowboys’ Firsts and Lasts OSU Kicks Off School Year
Kennedy Thomason News & Lifestyle Editor
and I just go through the motions of it. It’s not really exciting anymore because I’ve had so many first days now.” While the first days might be lackluster for returning students, Bradley is focused on finishing her undergraduate career on a high note. For Bradley, a first-generation college student and twin sister, her personal goals have motivated her to graduate a semester early. “My mom is a single parent, and she had twins, so that’s definitely a huge step back,” Bradley said. “We were fortunate enough to get Oklahoma’s Promise, which pays for our tuition, and I’ve gotten a plethora of scholarships because I was in a bunch of things in high school, and I’ve done a lot of things here.”
As old and new faces traverse campus this week, a mix of emotions have marked the first days. Whether students had their first move-in day, or are pre-ordering their cap and gown, Stillwater and its students are back to take on another year. Corey Bradley, a senior majoring in sociology, said the return to Stillwater was not as shiny as it was three years ago. “I think it just dulls,” Bradley said. “I think, I know, I expect See School on 7 what’s gonna happen,
Nick Becker OSU coach Colin Carmichael said he’s starting to see the Cowgirls’ identity come together in their 8-0 win against Little Rock on Sunday.
Cowgirl offense shines in win over Little Rock Parker Gerl Staff Reporter
identity come together,” said OSU coach Colin Carmichael. “We’re starting to form kind of who we are as a team, trying to do some OSU’s offense was dominant basic things right. Just trying to make strides every game.” from start to finish Sunday. The Cowgirls threatened The Cowgirls routed Little Rock 8-0 at Neal Patterson Stadi- shortly into the contest, as Laudan um to move to 3-1 and undefeated Wilson got a good look at the goal but missed. They quickly respondat home. ed on their next shot, as Nicole “We’re starting to see our Ray scored with ease thanks to
Logan Heausler’s assist in the 12th minute, putting OSU up 1-0. “There was a lot of space on the side, and I told Logan there was an opportunity, like, ‘Hey, I’m wide open, next one, next one,’” Ray said. “And sure enough, I could count on her. She found me and set me up, she gifted me that goal. So, thanks to logan for that assist, it was a beautiful ball.” See Win on 4
File Photo Stillwater traditions such as the Lights on Stillwater, brings the community closer.
Museum researchers enlist hundreds of home gardeners in fight to save the iconic monarch butterfly Nara Schoenberg Chicago Tribune CHICAGO -- On a suburban street with smooth lawns and trimmed bushes, Martha Chiplis’ yard stands out. It’s not just the wildflowers: purple wild petunia, golden lanceleaf coreopsis, hot-pink Bush’s poppy mallow. It’s the lemon-yellow goldfinches that snack on the seeds, the fluffy bees that feed on the blooms. And then there’s the star of the show: a monarch butterfly that descends within minutes. The orange and black showstopper flies low and circles twice, so close that you can almost reach out and touch it. “Oh! Yea!” says Chiplis, 58, of Berwyn. “They’ve been flying around all morning.” At a time when monarch butterflies are struggling for survival, Chiplis is one of over 400 home gardeners throughout the Chicago area who have participated in a four-year Field Museum research project aimed at understanding how urban areas can provide much-needed habitat for the iconic insects. The gardeners, who range from beginners with one milkweed plant to veterans with hundreds, have collected detailed data on monarchs, eggs and caterpillars in their yards, decks,
community gardens and balconies — contributing up to 1,800 records each summer. “We hope when we publish that it will show that these gardens can support (monarchs),” said Karen Klinger, a geographic information systems analyst at the Field Museum. ”It depends on the year, but one year people saw 7,000 eggs. So there are butterflies that are coming out of these native gardens.” With experts calling for an “all hands on deck” approach to saving the monarch that includes planting milkweed in parks, agricultural areas and rights of way, Field Museum researchers, who concluded the garden-monitoring phase of their work in 2022, are now analyzing data that they hope will contribute to our understanding of how much private citizens’ backyard milkweed plantings can do for monarchs. Klinger and Field Museum lead conservation ecologist Aster Hasle were among the co-authors of a 2019 study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution that found that four large metro areas, including Chicagoland, have higher amounts of milkweed than previously assumed. The researchers, who did random sampling of existing milkweed, estimated that the Chicago area had 15.3 million stems. And they found that there was enough available green space here — much of it lawn — to add 1.4 mil-
Courtesy of Tribune News Service A monarch butterfly rests in the Rice Garden just outside the Field Museum, Aug. 9, 2023.
lion stems of milkweed if just 2% of all owners of available green space planted a reasonable amount of milkweed. That’s important at a time when experts say that planting milkweed is vital to the survival of the Eastern monarch population, which is estimated to be down by more than 80% since the 1990s. “Cities could provide up to one-
third of the milkweed thought to be needed to stabilize the population,” said Hasle. Hasle and Klinger couldn’t get into peoples’ backyards to count milkweed for the 2019 study, so they decided to recruit volunteers who would help them understand more about that aspect of the monarch survival puzzle. See Butterfly on 8