keeping up with the kansan (feb. 2-5)

KEEPING UP WITH THE

KANSANWEEKLY RECAP

FEB. 2 - 5, 2015

HARSHREALITY

“THE HEREDITARY ESTATE” AND THE

DARK SIDE OF FAMILY LIFE | SEE A&F

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY BAYLEE SOWTER

For the past two years, the KU Memorial Unions com-mittee has looked into a project to redesign aspects of the Kansas Union to re-flect what students want.

Director of Memorial Unions, David Mucci said the University is evaluating which changes reflect stu-dents’ desires. Mucci said the plan was sparked by the University-wide “Master Plan” initiated in 2013.

To begin with, the steer-ing committee at the Me-morial Unions conducted more than 50 focus groups that involved about 86 stu-dents and 59 faculty and staff. The initial idea was to consider creating a union in the center of campus, around Wescoe Hall.

However, the Universi-ty’s “Master Plan” conflict-ed with the idea, Mucci said. Instead, the Memo-rial Unions staff decided to work on improving the Kansas Union.

A steering committee looked at the data from the focus groups to assess necessary changes to the Union. A majority of par-ticipants asked for more natural light and open space. The committee also visited student unions at other universities, spe-cifically the University of North Carolina State and the University of Wiscon-

sin.From there, the steering

committee created an ab-stract idea of how the Kan-sas Union could be reimag-ined.

“Essentially it was, if we had our dream proj-ect, here’s what the Union would look like,” Mucci said. “It really [reflected] student interest in opening up the building, bringing in natural light, [and] ex-panding space.”

The local architecture firm Clark-Huesemann created a series of plans in December. Although Muc-

ci said the project is still very much “in the works,” the proposed plans show significant changes to the Union’s current layout.

For example, the Roast-erie on the fourth floor would expand to the front of the building, closer to Jayhawk Boulevard.

“The idea was access to Jayhawk Boulevard to make [the shop] more open and porous — bring people in, expand our coffee oper-ations,” Mucci said.

More lounge space would be added on the first through fourth floors,

including a revival of a restaurant or club on the first floor. One plan showed a restaurant as part of the bookstore on the second floor.

The other major change, at least as reflected in the current plans, would re-move Jaybowl, the Union’s bowling alley. Mucci said the steering committee was unsure whether bowling fit into the new plan, especial-ly if a club were established on the first floor.

The director of Jaybowl, Becky Swearingen, was un-available for comment.

However, much of the plan is still up in the air. Some considerations, par-ticularly the financials of the plan, have not been ad-dressed yet.

“We’re looking towards fiscal year 2018 for a pos-sible start,” Mucci said. “There’s really no funding for this. What we’re really looking at is a recreation fee that sunsets in 2017 that might yield some sig-nificant dollars, without requiring additional fees increases on students.”

THE UNIVERSITY DAILY

KANSANFEB. 2-5, 2015

VISIT KANSAN.COM TO READ MORE OF THIS WEEK’SNEWS COVERAGENEWS

KU MEMORIAL UNIONS CONSIDERSRENOVATIONS FOR KANSAS UNION,INCLUDING JAYBOWL REMOVAL

CHANDLER BOESE@Chandler_Boese

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY CLARK 1 HUSSEMANN

In a decision made by The Kansan student man-agement team, its advisers and The Kansan Board, the University Daily Kan-san will print two days per week instead of four, be-ginning in fall 2015.

Currently, The Kansan prints four days per week: Monday through Thurs-day. Once the printing schedule is modified in the fall, the print edition will come out on Mondays and Thursdays.

After analyzing years of data and readership statis-tics — both at the Univer-sity and on a national level — it is in the best interest of our audience to make this change. We believe the money used to print and distribute Tuesday and Wednesday papers can be allocated more effectively in a way that will best ben-efit our readers. We aren’t changing the news — just how you consume it.

While the production of the printed paper will be reduced by half, The Kan-san will not cover only half the news. Without the stress and pressure of producing content for four print editions per week, the Kansan staff will focus its resources on breaking news, multimedia and on-line-exclusive content, as well as in-depth articles

for the two print editions per week for news, arts and features, sports and opin-ion content.

Keeping up with trends in journalism, The Kansan has taken multiple steps to revamp its online presence. We have a new website that allows us to optimize and organize content in a way that is the most user friendly to our readers. Staying true to our name, the University Daily Kan-san, we will still produce content on a daily basis. Our website will continue to be updated throughout the day and can be counted on as a source for the latest news that affects our cam-pus and beyond.

A top priority at The Kansan is to tell mean-ingful stories. By utilizing online resources, we can tell better ones. We are able to include videos, photos, galleries, tweets and links in our stories, which will improve the overall read-er experience. In an age where smart phones and laptops are always within arm’s reach, staying up to date with The Kansan is easier than ever.

To help you stay con-nected, we encourage you to follow The Kansan on Twitter, Facebook and Ins-tagram. These accounts are updated frequently with breaking news, informa-tion, photos, videos and links to our stories. The

Kansan is just a click away.The print edition will be

upgraded as part of this change. Reporters and ed-itors will be able to take extra time to write and develop stories, ultimately leading to higher quality content for the print prod-uct.

You’re probably wonder-ing if anything is going to happen to the basketball posters, puzzles and free-for-alls. They aren’t going anywhere.

At The Kansan, we take pride in helping groom the next generation of jour-nalists and marketers. The Kansan provides students

with hands-on, real-world experience you don’t get in the classroom. In today’s workplace, applicants are expected to possess a vari-ety of skills that go beyond writing stories and creating print ads. With the change to a digital-focused media organization, our student journalists and marketers will be better equipped to land high-profile jobs in the future.

We know this is a big change, but it’s a necessary one. Our staff takes pride in the national reputation of The Kansan as a top col-legiate newspaper. In 2014, the Princeton Review

ranked the University Dai-ly Kansan as the 11th best collegiate newspaper in the country, and we don’t plan on stopping there. The Kansan will continue to grow and improve, and this change is a major step in the right direction.

If you take away just one thing from this, let it be this: We still are — and will continue to be — the stu-dent voice of the Universi-ty of Kansas.

MEMBERS OF THE KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD ARE

BRIAN HILLIX, PAIGE LYTLE, STEPHANIE BICKEL, CECILIA

CHO AND SHARLENE XU



THE KANSAN’S PUSH TO BECOMEDIGITAL-FIRST, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU

KANSAN STAFF @KansanNews

KANSAN EDITORIAL

@KANSANNEWS

UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN

KANSAN.COM

JOIN US IN OUR GOAL OFBEING DIGITAL FIRST

Daniel Coburn, assistant professor of photo media at the University, created a recently published book called “The Hereditary Es-tate,” which provides a look into the imperfect nature of families. “The Hereditary Es-tate” is a collection of images, some of which represent do-mestic violence and suicide, based on events from Co-burn’s own family. It consists of Coburn’s original photog-raphy, photos gathered from yard sales and contributed essays. Tim Hossler, assistant professor of design, was the graphic designer for the proj-ect. Coburn comments on his work and how it has affected him.

KANSAN: Can you elaborate on your inspiration for “The Hereditary Estate”?

COBURN: It was kind of an inspiration that’s happened over the course of about five or six years. Basically, my work and research revolves around the family photo album. [It] is one compo-nent of this infrastructure that supports the American dream. What got me interest-ed in this (the inspiration) is my own family. When I was a … teenager, these truths about my family history started to come out — sto-ries from my parents, from my mother, from my father. My mother, her sister and my grandmother were victims of extreme domestic violence. I didn’t know this until I was a teenager. Also, my father had a brother [who] committed suicide. There was this kind of generational, cyclical al-coholism that had happened through my family history.

It was interesting to me be-cause that never appeared in my own family photo al-bum. What I saw in my own family photo album was a series of happy moments. So I guess you’d say that a lot of my work is about creating a supplement to the family photo album that tells a more complete story about the sometimes-troubling nature of family.

KANSAN: Because you never experienced these issues until you were a teenager, how has this book affected you?

COBURN: Making these photographs has become very cathartic. It’s been very therapeutic. All of the pho-tographs that I made for the book are staged recreations of memories and fantasies that I had on my journey to adulthood. Some of them are memories that my parents may have had that they’ve relayed to me, some of them are my own childhood mem-ories. So I’m restaging these events, and I’m having to do that in concert with my parents and my immediate family. I’m working with them very closely in this act of theater, this moment that we’re recreating. During that process, discussions happen, conversation happens, we talk about things that we’ve maybe never talked about be-fore. In that sense, it’s been a very positive thing. It is about my family, but I hope that it’s accessible. I want it to be accessible to most people. In an ideal world, I would think of these as somehow refer-encing this kind of universal experience, something that everyone can identify with.

KANSAN: Can you describe the catharsis that you’ve ex-

perienced?

COBURN: It’s really more about communication, and I think that there was a lack of communication. I think through the act of just being honest with each other about the things that have hap-pened in their past, and how that has affected us, [is help-ful]. I think that there is this passing of values from gener-ation to generation. If we can confront those things and stop them, then that’s a good thing; that’s a positive thing.

KANSAN: Did you have a specific process to create your photographs?

COBURN: Yeah, they’re all different. I think my work has become more and more ab-stract over time. I originally started by making very direct portraits of my parents and my brother and his children, but I’ve allowed myself to take some liberties with some abstraction. For instance, I’ll photograph a landscape that, for me, represents a certain psychological state. Or I’ll maybe photograph someone else that’s in my life, maybe

a significant other, and that person becomes a metaphor for maybe my grandparent or something like that. I’m interested in making photo-graphs that can become icons or symbols of the human ex-istence.

KANSAN: One of the pho-tos was of a blurred woman, leaning back in a rocking chair. Can you tell me about that photo?

COBURN: Sure, that’s my mom. The blurring that hap-pens in that image, and in other images where I make a double exposure, I want the work to be about my family, but I also want it to be about the medium of photography. I really think it’s important for photographers to engage with the history of the me-dium. For me, that work is also about spirituality. There’s this history of photography and spirituality. For instance, late-19th-century photogra-phers were actually con men [who] would convince people that they could actually take pictures of ghosts or their de-ceased relatives. So that blur-ring that happens, I think,

references that history of spiritualism in photography.

KANSAN: Has your experi-ence from this book had any affect on how you teach your students?

COBURN: I think it’s import-ant that no matter what type of creative you are — wheth-er you’re a writer or artist or photographer — that it’s important to see the value in documenting the things that are close to you, because those are the things that you know intimately and you understand very intimately. Sometimes, I think it’s easy to discount personal issues as not being important. But in actuality, I think [discount-ing personal issues] is very important, and sometimes it’s almost disingenuous to remove yourself from your immediate environment and not show the world what’s important to you, personal-ly. I encourage my students to remain true to themselves and to have some sort of in-tegrity in what they choose to photograph and choose to make.



Q&A: “THE HEREDITARY ESTATE” AND THE DARK SIDE OF FAMILY LIFE

LAUREN METZLERLauren Metzler

VISIT KANSAN.COM TO READ MORE OF THIS WEEK’S ARTS AND FEATURES CONTENTARTS & FEATURES

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO



OPINION FFA OF THE WEEK: GOING TO GO GET YOUR GIRL BECAUSE I HEARD SHE LIKES MARTINI NIGHT

SUPER Bowl Sunday is treated like a religious holiday. The living room is a church, the

chips and beer are our versions of bread and wine. Friends and family gather around to enjoy a classic game of football. But whether or not your favorite team made it to the championship, the commercials are a must-watch. The commercials during the Super Bowl are classic, and sometimes they are the most talked about during parts of the evening.

Every year, companies dish out millions to have just a few seconds of viewers’ attention. The report-ed rate for running a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl is $3.8 million, according to sbnation.com. With that amount of money, an ad needs to be creative — and this year, a common theme was emotional appeal.

Many of the commercials tugged at our heartstrings, getting us out of our game mode and in touch with our softer side. Dove and Toyota made sure viewers thought about their own father while they watched the sincere bond between child and dad unfold. While there was an em-phasis on appreciation for our dads this year, I was satisfied to see there were also commercials directed to the female audience. The NFL has faced scrutiny when it comes to women-related issues, as seen with domestic abuse cases. So, I think it was especially appropriate for ads like No More domestic violence and #LikeAGirl to run.

In Always’ #LikeAGirl commer-cial, adolescent boys and girls were asked to act out how a girl would run or fight — what followed were actions associated with overly-dra-matic and uncoordinated body language. When prepubescent girls were asked the same questions, their depictions of the actions represented girls as strong, fierce and capable. The dissimilarity between the two

age groups revealed the decline of self-esteem and confidence many females experience as they get older and become more influenced by negative societal stereotypes of women.

Out of 1,800 Americans, 76 percent of girls ages 16 to 24 said they no longer saw the phrase “like a girl” as an insult after watching the video. Two out of three men who saw it said they would stop or think twice before using the phrase “like a girl” in a negative way, according to a study by Research Now from December.

I’d like to applaud Always for

their #LikeAGirl commercial. They couldn’t have picked a better time to point out to sexist jerks that women should be equal to men. The commercial shows that women are not born into the world thinking they are weaker than their male counterparts, but being constantly told that idea can affect women as they hit puberty. The Super Bowl is a male-dominated event, so it was refreshing to see an advertisement focus on women’s issues. Not only does it get women thinking about how they view themselves, but it effectively reaches the attention of male viewers as well.

It’s important to take away from this commercial that negative ideas of women will only continue if we decide to create a barrier. Men get blamed a lot for issues related to women’s equality, but if we allow it to continue and do nothing, we aren’t helping the problem either. Sometimes going along with the sta-tus quo is just as bad as deliberately doing or promoting the wrong idea.

KANIKA KSHIRSAGAR IS A JUNIOR FROM OVERLAND PARK STUDYING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING.

KANIKA KSHIRSAGAR@sneakykaniky

#LIKEAGIRL SUPER BOWL COMMERCIAL SENDS POSITIVE MESSAGE FOR WOMEN

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/LIKE A GIRL



VISIT KANSAN.COM TO READ MORE OF THIS WEEK’S SPORTS CONTENTSPORTS

AS the red, white and blue confetti settled on the Uni-versity of Phoenix Stadium

field after Sunday’s Super Bowl, it signaled the final glimpse of the tumultuous NFL season which had preceded it. But speckled through-out the Glendale, Ariz. arena, some of the 70,000 spectators remained quiet and patiently waited.

They wanted more. They wanted one more game-winning drive from quarterback Tom Brady. One more implausible catch from Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse. One more Cinderella story, just as prominent as that of Patriots rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler, who clinched the victory with an interception in the waning seconds. Some would even

settle for one more fight as the final seconds on the season ticked down.

In many ways, the game itself represented what was a turbulent season for the league. The NFL was put into the limelight for its mishan-dling of player’s off-field conduct this year, especially in domestic violence cases. League commission-er Roger Goodell made a concerted effort to increase player safety with new policies, which ultimately failed in multiple instances in 2014.

The Super Bowl placed the immaculate receptions, the big hits and the scandals on center stage, which enthralled fans, but it also displayed the side of the sport which we despise.

In the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, the NFL again made national headlines for the Patriots’ mishandling of game balls, in what is now being called “Deflategate.”

Though investigation is ongoing, Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Tom Brady became the men tabbed as responsible for the under-inflated balls.

On Sunday, Belichick held up his fourth Lombardi trophy, tying Chuck Noll for most by a NFL head coach. Brady scooped up a handful of Super Bowl records — most completions, touchdowns and his third Most Valuable Player award — while also leading his team back from a 10-point deficit on two ex-hilarating touchdown drives in the fourth-quarter.

Deflategate forgotten.In the first half, Seahawks de-

fensive end Cliff Avril was sent off the field and was diagnosed with a concussion; he didn’t return. Good progress for the NFL on head injuries on the national stage, right? Wrong.

In the fourth quarter, Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman took a shot from Kam Chancellor after a 21-yard catch on 3rd-and-14. It was a crucial catch, but the millions of viewers saw it: Edelman was concussed, or at least appeared to be. He kept playing. Only a few plays later, he came down with what would soon be the game-winning touchdown as he finished with 109 yards, and a pair of glassy eyes.

Player safety forgotten.Despite all of it, the Super Bowl

featuring Katy Perry became the most-watched television program of all-time, according to NBC.

Good or bad, people are watching football, regardless of any disdain viewers might have with the league — on-or-off the gridiron. That’s how the NFL rolls, and we can’t get enough of it.

EVAN RIGGS@EvanRiggs15

SUPER BOWL XLIX DISPLAYED EVERYTHING TO LOVE, AND HATE, ABOUT NFL

SPORTS CALENDARSOFTBALLLIU BrooklynFeb. 6, 20158 a.m.Boca Raton, Fla.

WOMEN’S TENNISUNLVFeb. 6, 201510 a.m.Las Vegas, Nev.

SOFTBALLGeorgia TechFeb. 6, 201510:15 a.m. Boca Raton, Fla.

WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVINGIowa StateFeb. 6, 20156 p.m.Lawrence

TRACK AND FIELDHusker InvitationalFeb. 7, 2015All dayLincoln, Neb.

WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVINGIowa StateFeb. 7, 201510 a.m. Lawrence

WOMEN’S TENNISPacificFeb. 7, 2015Las Vegas, Nev.

SOFTBALLArkansasFeb. 7, 201512:30 p.m.Boca Raton Fla.

MEN’S BASKETBALLOklahoma State Feb. 7, 20151 p.m.Stillwater, Okla.

SOFTBALLFlorida AtlanticFeb. 7, 20155 p.m.Boca Raton, Fla.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALLOklahoma StateFeb. 7, 20157 p.m.Lawrence



SPORTS FOLLOW @KANSANSPORTS FOR ON-THE-FLY TWEETS OF THISWEEKEND’S HAPPENINGS IN SPORTS

SIGNING DAY: IN A PINCH, BEATY FINDS SPEED AND LENGTH IN TEXAS

Any team that fires its head coach in late Septem-ber of the previous season and ultimately finishes 3-9, and 1-8 in its confer-ence, has holes to fill.

It’s just that Kansas’ holes might be even bigger than most, given the recent hap-penings within the pro-gram.

With the graduation of 21 seniors off last year’s roster, running back Bran-don Bourbon transferring to nearby Washburn and wide receiver Nigel King throwing his name into the 2015 NFL Draft, new head coach David Beaty — hired Dec. 5 — had a day shy of two months to get cracking.

“You’re drinking from a firehose for a while there,” Beaty said of the chaotic 61-day stretch in which he accepted the coaching po-sition, hired his entire staff and scrambled to solidify 24 letters of intent from of-ten mercurial 18 to 20 year olds. “You’re managing a lot of things.”

So in a bit of pinch at a Kansas football program that doesn’t exactly recruit itself in a coaching limbo, Beaty and his burgeoning staff did what they did best: recruit the homeland.

“I think probably the biggest thing for us was familiarity of players,” Beaty said. “Most of these (coaches) have a back-ground in the state of Tex-as.”

The funny thing, though, was as desperate as Beaty and staff may have seemed in the moment, thanks to

his deep-rooted Texas ties, the phone worked both ways.

“The relationships in the state (helped),” Beaty said. “Guys just picking up and calling.”

On one end of the phone a high-school coach con-nected to Beaty — or one of his staff members — and would call with the name of an overlooked re-cruit. Beaty would answer with two conditions.

“We said we needed to improve our profile from a length perspective as well as speed perspective,” Beaty said Wednesday as he announced his 2015 re-cruiting class. “It’s a long, fast league now.”

“We can’t make them tall-er,” he continued, “but we

can make them bigger.”One of those late-stage

additions that was both long and fast and Texan, a Jan. 31 commitment, came kudos to assistant coach Klint Kubiak.

“I got to take my hat off to coach Klint Kubiak,” Beaty said of the Denzel Feaster signing. “He found a guy that had been play-ing quarterback his entire career, except for his last five games.”

Quite possibly, Feaster may have never played a down of Division 1 football as quarterback. Because of that, he slipped through the recruiting cracks.

But at a school like Kan-sas, a swift position change can maximize untapped abilities in a player like

Feaster. It worked for Ker-ry Meier, Brandon McAn-derson and Toben Opu-rum, just to name a few.

“This guy has instincts,” Beaty said of Feaster. “He will come downhill and he will knock the fire out of you. He puts his head on the ball. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing there yet.”

Feaster will most like-ly play somewhere in the secondary. There, he will be joined by six other 2015 defensive backs, one from Georgia, one from Michi-gan, the rest from Texas — just one of them, Marnez Ogletree, measuring in at sub-six-foot (5 feet 10 inches).

“All of these corners that are coming in here, they

have arms that are ex-tremely long,” Beaty said as he splayed his arms wide of his body toward oppo-site ends of the Anderson Family Football Complex. “We want them to be able to touch the walls as they stand in this room.”

The theme of length re-curred on the offensive side of the ball, highlight-ed by 6-foot-4 wide re-ceiver Chase Harrell from Huffman, Texas.

“I’ve known him since he was a pup,” Beaty said of Harrell. “Had a guy at Texas A&M that Chase re-minds me, reminds me of Mike Evans. He has a lot of similar qualities in the way he’s built, the way he moves at a young age.”

Although Kansas didn’t sign a player ranked higher than three stars according to any recruiting database — not that that matters — the Jayhawks stuck with what was right for the pro-gram and didn’t deviate from the long-term plan.

“The thing I am most proud of is that our coach-es did not let athletic abil-ity get in the way of just taking a guy because he’s that good,” Beaty said. “He had to be good and he had to be a Kansas guy.”

Even if he’s from Texas like Feaster is.

“When we offered him the scholarship, he shed a tear,” Beaty said of Feaster — Kansas his lone Power 5 offer.

“He wants to be here.”And by all accounts on

Wednesday, so does David Beaty.

DAN HARMSEN @udk_dan

BEN BRODSKY/KANSAN Coach David Beaty explains the talent KU football signed for this upcoming season.

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