WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY’S STUDENT NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1896 www.thesunflower.com
Jan. 25, 2024
Volume 128 Issue 17
Chief Elections Commissioner Gigi Guzman announces the unofficial results of the special election during the Student Government Assocation session on Wednesday, Jan. 24. The Constitutional amendment was unofficially passed with 246 votes in affirmation. | Photo by Allison Campbell / The Sunflower
Student vote allows Student Government to change organization BY COURTNEY BROWN
newsprojects@thesunflower.com
Students walk to and from the Heskett Center on Jan. 24. | Photo by Mia Hennen / The Sunflower
Heskett Center training gives students skill set, confidence to handle emergencies on campus BY ALLISON CAMPBELL news@thesunflower.com
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or more than 30 years, Beth Albers has taught life-saving techniques and emergency training to Wichita community members. Albers — the director of aquatics and risk management, the coordinator of events and the training center director at the Heskett Center — has provided more than 500 Heskett employees, from receptionists to lifeguards, with potentially life-saving training and certifications over the last six years. “It’s just what we do,” Albers said. “There’s a fulfillment of being able to take care of somebody when they need it.” In the event of an emergency at the Heskett Center, Wichita State’s recreation center, Albers and her team of student leads are responsible for the health and lives of the facility’s hundreds of daily guests, including students, intramural teams and local visiting organizations. “This is a ginormous building,” Albers said. “They’re (Heskett employees) the first responders to the victim. It doesn’t matter what position you’re in — if you’re closest (to an emergency), it’s your scene.” As the campus’ largest student employer, the Heskett Center and its faculty members provide essential training and certifications to student employees. All Heskett Center employees and faculty members are required to have basic life support (BLS) training, which includes CPR, Automated External Defibrillator
“ The thing that makes me feel good about the level of training that we do here is that the police got the call, (they) got over here and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s Beth and her staff — they got it.’ BETH ALBERS Director of aquatics and risk management, the coordinator of events and the training center director at the Heskett Center
(AED) for the professional rescuer, and first aid certification. Heskett employees practice the building’s emergency action plan monthly to maintain a safe environment. Additionally, employees attend two in-service days at the beginning of each semester, where each employee runs through and practices each of their certified training. These practices include rescues, scanning for injuries, pulling unconscious people out of the water, and even customer service training. “(That’s) a really long time when you have pulled someone out of the water,” Albers said. “It’s exhausting, but it’s what actually would happen, so I want (employees) to be doing it all the time. And then when it happens, you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I had that (training).’” Last semester, Albers and two Heskett student employees were called to action when a caregiver from Club Parkinson’s
collapsed during one of the organization’s regular visits to the Heskett Center. Albers and the employees performed over 12 minutes of CPR and attempted other life-saving measures before Wichita paramedics took over the scene. Sedgwick County EMS later pronounced the man dead. “We did what we needed to do, and nothing we did was going to change the outcome, unfortunately,” Albers said. “And so it kind of changed how we did our next training with our staff because there were little details that I know to say (when training others), but once I experienced it, are very different.” Former Wichita State University Police Department Officer Nathaniel Johnson, who responded to the emergency that day, said that the efficiency of the staff makes responding to incidents much easier for first responders. “When we arrived, walking in and … seeing CPR being done and knowing that it’s the best staff and knowing that they’re trained in that, it really helps us be able to coordinate getting those other first responders in there,” Johnson said. Albers said that, over the following weeks, as her team recovered, she received calls and comments praising the center and its employees for their rapid response.
SEE HESKETT, PAGE 2
The Student Government Association (SGA) will no longer have at-large senator seats, based on the uncertified results for the special election. The special election from Jan. 22-24 allowed all degree-seeking students the chance to vote whether or not to eliminate at-large seats and raise the set number of college-based seats in the Student Senate. The constitutional amendment passed with 73.87% of votes, or 246 students, voting to reallocate the Senate seats. 21.02% of students, or 70 votes, voted against the amendment, while 5.1%, or 17 voters, abstained. Only 2.5%, or 333 of 13,000 eligible voters, participated in this special election. The election, which was conducted online via ShockerSync, was set to start at 8 a.m. on Monday and ended at 5 p.m. on Wednesday. The email announcing the special election was sent to students at 12:47 p.m. on Monday. According to the SGA Uncertified Election Results, a formal announcement of the special election’s certification and ratification will be released on Friday, Jan. 26 at 1:30 p.m. The redistribution of Senate seats is intended to increase competition and productivity within SGA, according to Speaker of the Senate Kylee Hower. The constitutional amendment was first voted on by the Senate, who approved it on Dec. 6 after moving their meeting from the Rhatigan Student Center to a parking garage due to a gas leak. According to SGA’s bylaws, that “Constitution shall be deemed amended if any proposed amendment receives a simple majority of the votes cast at special election of the Association called for that purpose.” More information about the Senate Seat Reapportionment Act can be found at thesunflower.com.
‘Contribute to this catastrophe’: Well-versed photographer finds passion in education BY LOREN AMELUNKE
loren.amelunke@outlook.com
Cary Conover often takes a philosophical approach to his photography. He notes the beauty of feeling an emotional connection to subjects in a photograph that he might never personally interact with.
“How can a photographer get so into the lives of these people?” Conover, a photographer and educator, said, contemplating the thought. Conover lived in New York City from 2000 to 2010, working as a freelance photographer, namely for The New York Times and The Village Voice. In New York City, Conover’s photography featured dynamic and mobile subjects: an older
man strolling down the sidewalk with a large pen stain over his shirt pocket, a woman holding her toddler with a cigarette in its mouth or simply couples gazing at each other. “I was really into simply contributing to the tradition of street photography or the tradition of the documentation of New York,” he said. Conover was able to use his skills on a grave day in United States history. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Conover was woken by his neighbor pounding on the door. After receiving a quick explanation, he took to the roof of
his apartment with his camera. He managed to take a picture of the second plane before anyone — including him — knew it would hit the second tower. “Photography did that — not
me,” he said. “The camera will capture things that the photographer had no notion of at the time.” Later, he walked through the streets, documenting the terror on people’s faces.
“We (photographers) refused to be called victims of this. Even though we saw it and it affected us, we are documenters. That is how we can contribute to this catastrophe,” he said. After 10 years of photographing the rises and falls of New York City, Conover needed a change. His photography business was slowing down, and he was having to seek alternative methods to support his wife and a son they were expecting soon. “I was so sick of being stressed about the thing that I love the most,” Conover said. Conover began driving taxis for
extra money to help close the gap. “I remember getting home at five in the morning. I’ve been driving all night. I have $300 in cash, and I walk straight to the ATMs,” he said. While teaching a workshop in Manhattan, New York, he applied for a job at Andover High School. His leap of faith was like “swinging in the jungle, and you have to let go of one vine in order to grab another.” A new vine took Conover all the way to Kansas, where he began teaching photojournalism at Andover High School in 2011, and he soon found being an educator to be more enriching than the hustle and struggle of being a photographer. “What can you emphasize to young minds?” he said. In his teaching work, Conover invites students to connect their photography with their personalities, emphasizing that the interesting moments happen among people in the stands at a football game, not in the game itself. While teaching, Conover continues to work on his own photography projects. He found a
passion in documenting time — the relativity of it and how this is silently conveyed in a photograph. “That’s really captivating to me: Time … you’re revisiting your past, in a way,” he says. His photographs of Wichita are rife with nostalgia and the “idea of home” that he loves to depict. Drawing inspiration from
photographer Mark Klett, Conover drives to the different borders of Kansas and sets up a tripod facing the landscape. Nothing is particularly eye-catching, and he enjoys the challenge of that limitation. “A lot of people think you need to go out and show the world’s problems with your photography — no, it’s up to you to decide what you want to use it for,” Conover said.
Photos courtesy of Conover