Kiger Hour spotlights Latino community in Cache Valley

Folklore archives curator Randy Williams and Professors Maria Spicer-Escalante and Eduardo Ortiz introduced an audience to the Latino/Latina Voices Project on Thursday evening at Café Sabor.

Their discussion was part of the Kiger Hour, a monthly program sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. They spoke about the history of the project and the recent addition of youth narratives to the oral history collection in the Merrill-Cazier Library's digital collection.

The project, which seeks to capture what it means to be Hispanic in Cache Valley, started at Utah State in 2007 when Williams was moving records from the old Merrill Library’s archives and realized the perspective of the Latino population was not well represented.

“When we were getting ready to move from that library we had to box up stuff,” Williams said. “When I was going through the materials I kept saying to myself that there wasn’t anything in special collections that really reflects the Latino community. It just bugged me.”

Forty-seven people were interviewed for the project in 2007 and the interviews were transcribed and translated into English and Spanish. After winning a Human Ties Award from the Utah Humanities Council in 2009, Williams realized the project was still incomplete — it was missing the perspective of younger Latinos, he said.

 “We discovered that we needed to know more about what the youth were thinking,” Williams said. “So we started asking the youth.”
Ortiz said it is important to realize there is a separation between the first and second generation of immigrants.

“The difference between those two groups is huge,” Ortiz said. “In order to help this second generation it is important to understand the complexity of this group and the challenges they are facing.”

All of the students in Mountain Crest High School’s Latino Discovery class were interviewed for the project.

Emmie Staker co-founded Latino Discovery, which includes native students as well as immigrants.

“The new students that I have really felt a part of something,” Staker said. “They all loved it.”
One of the students interviewed was Luis Aduardo. He talked about the positive effects of his parents' decision to move to Cache Valley. He also talked about the struggles he has faced, including his grandmother's deportation five years ago.

“I’m glad that I finally got to say something about how I felt about living here in Cache Valley,” Aduardo said. “I hope that the community will realize that people need to work for what they have and that life isn’t always easy.”

Spicer-Escalante said that although Hispanics face many hardships, they generally view coming to the United States as a good thing and work hard to improve their skills.

“One thing that they all agree is that sacrifices and persistence is important to be successful,” she said.

Spicer-Escalante is pleased with the success of the project.

“I can't think of a better way to bring the Latino community to light,” she said.
Williams asked members of the Latino community in attendance to contribute to the effort to continue to grow the project.

“We hope throughout the years to add more interviews,” Williams said. “We hope that you tonight will help build up the voice of the Latino people by adding letters, diaries and journals.”

Brooke Larsen, McCarty Hatfield, Tricia Olson, Rhys Stephens and Landon Graham contributed to this article.

Parents clamoring for school district merger

The Logan Board of Education has been here before.

Spurred by the rapid growth of the city and its surrounding areas, the board examined the possibility of uniting with the Cache Valley School District in 1988. A study commissioned to examine the merits of a merger, though, concluded the costs outweighed any potential savings.

But prompted by new growth, including the planned construction of a school in Providence that will serve students in the city of North Logan – who could have to spend nearly an hour and a half on a bus, each day, despite living minutes from schools in Logan — some parents say it’s once again time to re-evaluate the status quo.

At a public hearing intended for a discussion about levying taxes and funding bonds for the city’s students and schools, board members instead heard a plea for a new merger study.

“I agree we need more funding for our children,” said Darren Anderson, a local physician who took the microphone during the public comment period. “We need to look at the long-term future of our children. Maybe we can do it more efficiently if we are one district.”

Anderson is a member of Parents for School District Merger, a group that hopes to convince the district to consider uniting the Logan and Cache County School Districts to cut costs and better serve students.

He called on the school boards to collaborate with the public in getting more accurate information on how a merger would affect taxes.

“In my field, if we based things off a 24-year-old study it would bring harm to the patients,” Anderson said. “This situation is no different, the patients are our children. Things have changed and now we have to re-evaluate and I’m being told that the district won’t do it because a study has already been done.”

Danny Brownell, who organized the parent group, beieves district leaders have been hesitant about considering the proposal.

“If we consolidate school districts the administration believes that their jobs will be on the line,” he said. “There’s also the fact that both districts may lose some representation. If that was me, I’d be cautious too.”

But board president Kristie Cooley said the districts are not against a new study.

“This has been something that we have talked about,” she said. “We were just waiting for the public to ask for it because it’s not something we wanted to step out on limb for until we knew the public was interested. Most of the pleas have come from patrons from North Logan and Millville. This is the first we’ve heard from Logan residents about this proposition.”

“We’re one county and it’s silly to have a doughnut hole in the school districts,” parent Lisa Anderson said. “I believe every child in Cache Valley matters. When we say we can do better for the students in Logan, I want to say we can do better for the students in Cache Valley.”

Until the school board consents to a study, the group has retained former State Office of Education official Larry Newton to conduct a similar review to the one done in 1988. Newton will also help the group with consulting work and financial questions.

Brownell said the public deserves to vote on the merger. To that end, it is circulating a petition for a referendum on the matter.

If a study were conducted and proved that consolidating the districts would not be beneficial to the community, Lisa Anderson said, the group would abandon the idea and look toward another solution.

“We need to look at things collectively to provide the best for our children,” she said. “That’s something I believe in very passionately.”

Cameron Etherington, Rebecca Walker, Connor Comeau, Lilibeth Salvador and McCall Bulloch contributed to this article.

Anti-porn club hosts Battle of the Bands

The Cotton Ponies weren’t expecting to win Saturday’s Battle of the Bands at Utah State University.

“We came tonight just to have fun,” lead vocalist Abby Allen said. “It was just a way cool, way awesome night bringing together a lot of different bands with different styles for a good cause.”

That cause — supporting the fast-growing anti-pornography group Fight the New Drug — was something concert attendee Ashlan Rogers had no trouble backing.

Rogers said pornography has had “a huge effect” on her family.

“It started out with my dad completely changing the way he treated my mom,” she said. “He was cold, rude and would say disgusting and degrading things to her and made her feel ugly all the time with what he said.”

Eventually, she said, her father’s abuse began to spread to the children as well.

“He became extremely rude toward us and wasn’t interested in our lives nearly as much as he used to be,” she said.

Rogers said people need to be able to openly talk about the problem. And in sponsoring the concert, which was held in the George Nelson Fieldhouse from 5 to 9 p.m., the club was trying to do just that, said Scott Heninger, the director of the event.
 

“Fight the New Drug tries to put pornography more out in the open so more people are willing to talk about it and not be afraid to get help,” Heninger said. “Being in Utah and around the culture of Mormonism the way it is, pornography is made out to almost be taboo. The club tries to dissolve that.”

The organization was founded by Clay Olsen, a former Utah State student, in 2010. Jacob McBride, president of the USU chapter, said despite being established only a few years ago the club has grown immensely.

The club moved to Salt Lake City in 2011 and now has around 20 chapters across the nation. It is also getting started in Germany and Pakistan, among other countries, club leaders said.

Club members argue that pornography is a narcotic-like catalyst for domestic strife, including infidelity and divorce.

James Shepard, a guitarist and backup vocalist for the band Alarmingly Charming, was excited to take part in Battle of the Bands and the cause behind it.

“Playing in USU’s Battle of the Bands will open the door to connections with other local bands and hopefully allow beneficial networking opportunities,” Shepard said. “Additionally, as the show is a fundraiser for Fight the New Drug, we figured we should support the cause. If music is the way to do that why not kill two birds with one stone?”

The competition consisted of 11 local bands with various musical genres including punk-rock, pop, indie and alternative.

Utah State student Weston Kay enjoyed the show’s atmosphere.

“I like it because it’s super relaxed and has somewhat of an indie vibe,” Kay said. “The bands are getting involved with the crowd and if they mess up they just laugh along with everyone and shake it off.”

Kay said the cause behind the event added to the good experience.

“I came to the event to support local bands, discover new music and meet new people,” he said. “And ended up also supporting a good cause.”

Brooke Larsen, Tricia Olson, McCarty Hatfield, Rhys Stephens and Landon Graham contributed to this article. 

USU hosts undergraduate research conference

Hundreds of undergraduate students and research staff from universities and colleges across the state visited Utah State University on Friday for the seventh-annual Utah Conference of Undergraduate Research.

Scott Bates, the director of undergraduate and graduate research at Utah State, said the event was a great opportunity to showcase students, faculty and the USU campus.

“It is designed to be multidisciplinary,” Bates said. “There will be people presenting on linguistics and DNA, there are a bunch of psych projects and biology projects and a lot of students doing health-related projects. There is a ton of variability here.”

Students presented their findings on posters in the Taggart Student Center International Lounge and delivered oral presentations in the Eccles Conference Center.

For USU students and some 400 visitors, Bates said, UCUR isn't a competition, but rather "an opportunity for students who would never have a chance of presenting to do a poster session or oral presentation of their research.”

Brigham Young University researcher Hannah Winzenried attended UCUR for the first time Friday. Her presentation, “Perceptions of Red Hair Through Time,” analyzed sexual stigmatization among redheads.

“Quite a lot of BYU students have come up for this. I think there are more BYU students presenting than Utah State students, actually,” Winzenried said. “Weber State and Utah Valley University and the University of Utah are all up here too.”

USU senior Deborah Teuscher’s research centers on hospice and in-home health care.

“I love the conference because we have the opportunity to mingle with students from different universities,” Teuscher said. “It’s a chance to see what they’re studying and also relate to those who are in our field. I had lunch with students from BYU who are studying the social sciences as well, so it was fun to talk about what we were studying and relating to one another.”

Biology major Thomas Anderson and bio-engineering major Whitney Morgan have worked for years to perfect the pharmaceutical compound pradimicin.

“As a developed therapeutic it could be effective against both AIDS and fungal infections at once, which would be tremendous,” Anderson said. “But right now, it’s not very soluble and it can be toxic.”

Anderson and Morgan said while their research required them to collaborate with other departments on campus, there were also benefits of attending inter-collegiate conferences.

“By presenting at events like UCUR,” Morgan said, “you let other people know what research is being done and maybe you might get other ideas from other peoples' projects that can influence yours.”

Anderson sees undergraduate conferences as a chance to practice future appeals for funding and research grants.

“It's important to be able to present this information effectively and simply. In funding settings for example, when we're appealing for funding, it's good for us to understand our own work more thoroughly and be able to explain it more simply,” Anderson said.

Morgan, Anderson and other presenters run Utah’s undergraduate research conference circuit as a warm-up for larger, more prestigious conferences. Having attended several of these other conferences, such as January’s Utah Research Summit, Morgan said she and Anderson saw a lot of familiar faces at UCUR.

“We expect to see a lot of these presentations at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in April,” Anderson said.

For biology major David Gage, presenting “Building New N-Oxide Bonds with Fungi” — a look at using metabolic properties of different fungi or bacteria to produce pharmaceutical compounds — at UCUR affirmed his decision to study at Utah State, where research is not solely open to upperclassmen.

“I've heard from students at other schools that you have to be a junior or senior before you start going into serious research, but here at Utah State, I started working in the lab my first semester,” Gage said. “Utah State can hold its own as a research school.”

Gage credited USU’s professors for creating a positive research environment for undergraduate students.

“The professors care a lot about the students in their labs, they're very quick. And my professor always pushes me to do more,” he said.

While Friday was the first time Utah State had hosted UCUR, Bates said the honor of hosting the conference is well-earned.

“We are sort of the preeminent undergraduate program in the state. Ours is the oldest program. We are the one that is most well-known around the state,” Bates said. “Being able to showcase that here at UCUR and to be able to say ‘This is well deserved’ is really something.”

Mary Taggart, Sam Bennion, Landon Kohler, Hannah Heninger and Amanda Ahlman contributed to this article. 

ASUSU elections coming — but will students show up?

When the signs promoting candidates in the Associated Students of Utah State University election go up around campus this week, Dayton Martindale will do his best to ignore it all.

“I haven’t even given it a second thought,” he said. “I have been here for two years and I haven’t seen how ASUSU has had any input about anything. The fact is that there are people above them that are making all the final decisions.”

He’s not alone in his disinterest. Fewer than 30 percent of students on Utah State’s main campus voted in the 2012 student government election.

But when either Josue Carias, Doug Fiefia, Luke Ensign, Hayden Smith or Chaise Warr is announced as the newly elected ASUSU president, following the voting on Wednesday and Thursday, they’re going to have a lot of big issues to tackle, said current ASUSU President Christian Thrapp.

Among the biggest challenges: A change in missionary age announced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints last year is expected to have a significant impact on enrollment and funding.

"Next year will probably be pretty interesting,” Thrapp said. “We will be losing so many students to missions that the student fee board will have to deal with the potential of lost funding. Less students means less money.”

In addition to dealing with the potential loss of funds, the incoming student government will be in charge of finalizing the plans for a new student health and fitness center.

“The new president will help with the development and the design of the new Aggie Life and Wellness Center once it gets passed,” Thrapp said. “They will be traveling to other universities checking out what other campuses have going on.”

James Morales — one of the “people above” that students like Martindale believe render ASUSU essentially powerless — said student opinion does play a important role in the direction the university is heading.

The vice president for student services believes that a higher voter turnout is essential for the success of ASUSU.

“If students become involved in university issues, their voices can be heard and make a difference,” Morales said. “With enough support, ASUSU can make positive changes for the university. It is essential for the students to speak up.”

Morales hopes that throughout this week students realize that the potential candidates can make a difference for Utah State, and he encouraged all students to become informed and see what decisions lie ahead.

Bradley Thatcher, Jordan Groff, Zach Waxler and Caesarea Kritz contributed to this article.