Six Fort Hays State University student writers received honors at this year’s 10th annual Writing Tigers ceremony.
English Composition 102 research essay student winners are listed by hometown with monetary awards, placements and titles of the essays.
Derby: Carla Miller won a $100 first-place award for her essay “Vaccination: A Parent’s Obligation.”
Topeka: Mackinzie Foster won a $50 award for her third-place finish on her essay “The Underrepresentation of Women in STEM Fields.”
Shattuck, Okla.: Brianna Witchey won a $75 second-place award for her essay “Demons and Victims: Why Suicide Should Not Have a Stigma.”
Rachel Moravek (Photo courtesy John Moravek)
Composition 101 essay student winners:
Hays: Rachel Moravek won a $100 first-place award for her essay “On the Horizon.” Alexis Wasinger won a $50 third-place award for her essay “Positive Not Perfect: The Evaluation of a Learning Space.”
Salina: Michael Stueve won a $75 award for a second-place finish on his essay “Mallard’s Rebirth.”
Dr. Cheryl Duffy, professor of English and chair of the Writing Tigers event, presented certificates. The essays were written during fall 2015 or spring 2016 semesters.
Following the awards ceremony, the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society hosted an open mic session with students and faculty reading and performing their original work.
Sponsored by the Department of English with support from the Becky P. and Mike Goss Distinguished Professor of Excellence in Teaching, Writing Tigers was held in conjunction with the annual John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activities Day.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Latest on the fatal shooting of a police detective in Kansas City, Kansas (all times local):
3 p.m.
A parolee suspected of gunning down a Kansas City, Kansas, police detective has been charged in Missouri with felonies linked to gun-related crimes he allegedly committed before he was shot by police and arrested.
Prosecutors in Jackson County charged 28-year-old Curtis Ayers with first-degree assault, resisting arrest, two counts of unlawful use of a weapon, and three counts of armed criminal action.
Ayers was hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition.
Prosecutors in Kansas’ Wyandotte County still were weighing charges against Ayers in connection with Monday’s shooting death of Brad Lancaster.
Court documents included with Tuesday’s charges allege Ayers, when cornered by police, shot and wounded a woman during an attempted carjacking and fired at another motorist.
10:05 a.m.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is ordering flags in Wyandotte County to be lowered to half-staff in memory of a slain police detective.
Brownback directed the county’s flags lowered Tuesday through sundown Wednesday in 39-year-old Brad Lancaster’s honor.
Police say Lancaster died at a hospital Monday about three hours after being shot near a racetrack in Kansas City, Kansas.
A suspect, 28-year-old Curtis Ayers, has been arrested. Ayers was shot by police during an attempted carjacking. He is in stable condition Tuesday at a hospital.
The local Fraternal Order of Police says a candlelight vigil in Lancaster’s memory is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall in Kansas City, Kansas.
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9:40 a.m.
Kansas’ top law enforcement official says the state mourns the “senseless” shooting death of a Kansas City police detective.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt said in a statement Tuesday that he extends his prayers to the family of 39-year-old Brad Lancaster’s family and to Lancaster’s former colleagues.
Police say Lancaster died at a hospital Monday about three hours after being shot while responding to a report of a suspicious person near a racetrack.
A suspect, 28-year-old Curtis Ayers, was arrested after being shot by police during an attempted carjacking after he crashed another car. He was in stable condition Tuesday at a hospital.
HaysMed recognized several nursing Associates on National Nursing Day on Friday, May 6. Glenda Schuetz, Patient Care Technician was recognized with the Caring Hands PCT of the year award. The PCT is a very important part of the patient care team as they extend the care of the nurse through positive interaction with patients and visitors by anticipating needs.
Chad Burgardt, Customer Care Representative was named the Debra Boeken CCR of the Year. A CCR serves as the face of the unit and often sets the tone for how our patients’ family members and other visitors see the hospital and the care provided.
The Lanita Smith LPN of the Year award was given to Tiffany DeWitt. The LPN of the Year award is named after Smith, a former nurse that took pride in her role as an LPN and her ability to positively impact a patient’s life as a nurse in many different roles at HaysMed. This award honors an LPN who displays many of the same characteristics that Smith had including kindness, compassion, concern and friendliness all the while being a great member of the patient care team.
Schuetz works at Southwind Surgical and has been with HaysMed since 2008. Burgardt is a floating CCR and has been an Associate of HaysMed since 2012. Dewitt works in the Convenient Care Clinic and has been an Associate of HaysMed for 6 years.
NEW YORK (AP) – Kansas City Royals prospect Raul Mondesi has been suspended for 50 games for testing positive for clenbuterol, a banned steroid.
The penalty was announced Tuesday against the 20-year-old infielder, who is on Kansas City’s 40-man roster but had been optioned to Double-A.
Mondesi is the son of former NL Rookie of the Year Raul Mondesi. The younger Mondesi was the first player to make his big league debut in the World Series.
A positive test for a performance-enhancing drug usually results in an 80-game suspension, but Major League Baseball and the players’ union agreed to the reduced punishment after Mondesi showed the steroid came from cold medicine. Mondesi says he took the over-the-counter medication without reading the label or consulting his trainer.
He apologized and said he never intended to “take a substance that would give me an unfair advantage on the field.”
Sales tax revenues continue to decline for Ellis County.
According to Treasurer Ann Pfeifer, sales tax revenues have decreased 10-percent over the last two years.
Pfeifer presented the Ellis County Commission with an update on the sales tax fund, which is used to pay for the Courthouse/Law Enforcement Center and Emergency Services Building projects, at Monday night’s meeting.
Pfeifer said they are asking the commission to delay making payments from the sales tax fund so they can pay the lease payment to the Public Building Commission, which makes the bond payments.
Commissioner Barb Wasinger said the drop in sales tax revenue means the departments need to look for ways to save money.
“This is exactly why we asked department heads and elected officials not to fill positions,” Wasinger said. “This is a problem, this is not something that suddenly rose up and bit us, this is something that’s been coming and we’ve been warning of it.”
Earlier this year, the commission instructed department heads to find places within their budget to cut as they set the 2017 budget. Commissioner Dean Haselhorst said he would like to see a five-percent cut over last year.
According to Pfeifer, the county and the city of Hays collected $224,176.90 in April 2016 from the 0.5-percent sales tax. That is almost $24,000 less than the year before and $25,000 less than 2014. Pfeifer said she has revised downward the monthly estimate twice this year to now $262,000.
In July, the county may have transfer money from the general fund to make the bond payment because of a timing issue Pfeifer said. The PBC would the pay back the money later in the month when they receive the money from the sales tax fund.
Haselhorst said, “Revenues are down everywhere.”
Wasinger added “and it’s only getting worse.”
Pfeifer said if the trend continues the county could face a bigger shortfall in the future.
At Monday’s meeting, the PBC approved accounts payable to MW Builders for construction services for $426,700.75. The commission also moved $10,232 from the Emergency Services construction fund to the Courthouse/Law Enforcement fund and $678.28 from the general fund to the Courthouse/Law Enforcement fund.
In other business, the commission agreed to move forward with assisting the cities of Ellis and Victoria with 2016 street rehabilitation projects.
Agreed to a tentative date of June 6th to hold a joint meeting with the Barton County Commission to discuss potentially combining K-State Research and Extension services into a regional service. The county previously identified the move as a way to save money.
Discussed the possibility of holding a tax foreclosure every year.
HARVEY COUNTY- Law enforcement authorities in Harvey County were working an incident involving multiple shots fired at a school bus on Tuesday afternoon, according to a social media report.
The school bus was on Highway 50 near Walton northeast of Newton. The shooter was reported as being a teenage boy shooting from the passenger side of a grey or silver pickup truck, according to the Harvey County Sheriff’s Office.
There are no injuries reported and a search for the suspect continues.
Examination of the school bus has not revealed any bullet holes so far, according to the sheriff’s department.
The suspect shooter is reported as being a white male with dark blond hair riding in a possible 2010 or newer full size pick up truck. The bus driver stated she saw the gun and heard one gun shot.
All schools in U.S.D. 373 were temporarily placed on lock-down as a precautionary measure. The lock-down was lifted just after 3:30p.m.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Court documents allege that a man held a Lawrence college student against her will and beat her before returning her to her sorority six days later.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the allegations are part of recently released court documents in the case against 30-year-old Shane Steven Allen.
He faces one felony charge of kidnapping and four felony charges of battery in the attack last month on a 20-year-old woman whom he met through a mobile dating app.
An arrest affidavit filed in Douglas County District Court alleges that Allen beat the woman after accusing her of flirting with his friend. He is accused of telling her she couldn’t go until her face healed.
Allen is jailed on $100,000 bond. It wasn’t immediately known if he had an attorney.
SALINA -The Saline County Clerk’s office has released the unofficial results from the special sales tax vote that closed at noon today.
According to Saline County Clerk Don Merriman, 11,566 ballots were cast in the election. Of those, 6,216 voted in favor of the sales tax increase, while 5,350 voted against it. Ballots were mailed to 28,638 registered voters that live within the Salina city limits.
Merriman tells The Salina Post that he didn’t have an exact number of how many ballots were invalid due to signature and address issues. “It was a rather large number, unfortunately,” he said. He estimates that around 5,000 ballots had bad addresses.
The passage of the new sales tax increase repeals the current 0.4% special sales tax and increases it for businesses in Salina to 0.75%. The overall sales tax will increase from 8.40% to 8.75% effective October 1st.
The Salina City Commission previously committed the $9.35 million the special tax is anticipated to raise each year for neighborhood street improvements, property tax stabilization, parks, job creation, capital improvements, neighborhood revitalization and the old Smoky Hill River channel cleanup.
The election results will be canvassed at 9 a.m. Monday in Room 209 of the City-County Building.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Authorities say a 16-year-old has been flown to a hospital after diving head-first into a retention pond near a Lawrence high school.
6 News in Lawrencereports that the student was injured Monday afternoon near Free State High School. Lawrence Fire Chief Mark Bradford says the student was taken to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. His injury wasn’t considered life threatening.
The name of the student wasn’t immediately released.
Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, wore a pink tutu Friday in honor of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri’s spring fundraiser, which was titled “PinkOut.” HANNAH COPELAND / HEARTLAND HEALTH MONITOR
By DAN MARGOLIES
Last week was a busy one for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.
Then Planned Parenthood fired back with a lawsuit calling the action illegal and politically motivated.
The timing may have turned out to be serendipitous for the organization. On Friday night it held its first spring fundraiser, a dinner at the historic Firestone Building in Kansas City, and the event drew between 150 and 200 people, according to Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Bonyen Lee-Gilmore.
In honor of the event, which was titled “PinkOut,” many of the women attendees wore pink dresses and many of the men pink shirts with blazers.
Before the dinner, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, Laura McQuade, responded to a few questions from a reporter and had harsh words for Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. Sporting a black blouse and pink tutu, the outspoken McQuade said the state’s cutoff of Medicaid funding was meant to divert attention from the state’s other, serious problems.
“I think that ideologically he (Brownback) has a very extreme view both of Planned Parenthood and reproductive and sexual health services, and he made that clear in his statement after cutting Medicaid that this really was an ideological fight for him,” she said. “But at the same time he can have the added benefit of distracting people in the state from how serious the problems are in Kansas right now, as if access to Medicaid is at the heart of what’s troubling Kansas right now.”
Asked to respond, Eileen Hawley, a spokeswoman for Brownback, said in an email, “The governor called for defunding Planned Parenthood in his 2016 State of the State address to protect the unborn and support a culture of life in Kansas. Planned Parenthood has been fully informed of the reasons for this decision, including its own refusal to submit to a lawful inspection of their premises.”
In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood said it did cooperate with the inspection, although it refused to allow inspectors to take photographs out of concern for patients’ and staff’s privacy and safety.
McQuade said that Planned Parenthood was expecting the cutoff; Brownback had attacked the organization in his January State of the State address and directed health officials to end its participation in the state’s Medicaid program, known as KanCare.
“Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby body parts is antithetical to our belief in human dignity,” Brownback said in his address, apparently referring to undercover videos made by an anti-abortion group that purported to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood affiliates illegally sell fetal tissue.
A dozen states, including Kansas and Missouri, have investigated that claim and none have found wrongdoing on the part of Planned Parenthood.
“We’ve known for a long time that this was coming,” McQuade said of the Medicaid cutoff. “The governor was very public in his State of the State in early January. To be honest, we were somewhat surprised that it took him that long to show his hand.”
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment notified McQuade’s organization last week that its Medicaid funding would be terminated on May 10. But after Planned Parenthood sued KDHE administrator Susan Mosier the next day, KDHE agreed to hold off the termination for another two weeks.
“They extended the termination date until May 24, which is really obvious that this is not a public health issue. It really is all to do with politics,” McQuade said. “So we are accepting Medicaid, and we feel confident we’re going to win the lawsuit … because this is a total violation of the free choice-of-provider provision in the Medicaid Act.”
The state’s action came just weeks after the Obama administration sent letters to all 50 states warning them that terminating Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood may violate federal law.
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri sees about 500 Medicaid patients a year, McQuade said. The state’s cutoff of Medicaid funding would affect not just those 500, she said, but a potentially larger pool of patients if Kansas decides to expand Medicaid eligibility in the future. Kansas is one of 19 states that so far have not expanded Medicaid eligibility.
“This is about the potential to provide as much coverage as we can in the Kansas community, which we really feel is coming, even if not this year then in the next couple of years,” McQuade said. “The impact would be tremendous if we would not be able to provide services.”
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri operates six clinics, including one that provides abortion services, in greater Kansas City, Columbia, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas. In 2014, it served more than 20,000 patients, according to its website.
It recently expanded into three new health service areas, including pre- and post-menopausal care, transgender care and PrEp care, a preventative that lowers the chance of contracting HIV for patients who have a high risk of infection.
The organization is not only under attack in Kansas; it’s also under assault in Missouri, where lawmakers spurned more than $8 million in Medicaid funding for statewide family planning, STD and other reproductive health services, replaced the money with state general revenues and stipulated that none of it could be directed to organizations that provide abortions.
Missouri’s state health agency has sought to revoke the abortion license of Planned Parenthood’s Columbia clinic, but a federal judge blocked the move late last year pending a hearing on the merits.
Missouri’s action came after the University of Missouri canceled the hospital admitting privileges of the physician performing medication-induced abortions at the Columbia clinic. Planned Parenthood said the university submitted to political pressure from Missouri lawmakers.
Dan Margolies, editor of the Heartland Health Monitor team, is based at KCUR. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies.
Today we’re sharing a document created by Hays’ government called “A Stronger Hays.”
This short, readable document clearly illustrates the problems they face from a Strong Towns angle, as well as some potential solutions. We think you’ll find it useful.
We provide these resources for you–free of charge–because we know you’re out there working to build strong towns. If you like what we do, consider supporting this movement by becoming a member today.
Chuck Marohn is the Founder and President of Strong Towns.
Today we’re sharing a document created by Hays’ government called “A Stronger Hays.”
This short, readable document clearly illustrates the problems they face from a Strong Towns angle, as well as some potential solutions. We think you’ll find it useful.
We provide these resources for you–free of charge–because we know you’re out there working to build strong towns. If you like what we do, consider supporting this movement by becoming a member today.
FHSU University Relations and Marketing
Today we’re sharing a document created by Hays’ government called 
