Currently, two  area coordinators oversee the residence halls, divided into East and West positions.

In past years, four area coordinators oversaw residence halls, which include White, Downey, McIntyre, and Orr, along with Hill-Crane.

“When I met with the current Residence Life staff, we talked about how we were pretty big staff-wise. We had four area coordinators, two assistant directors, and one associate director and the associate director supervised all six people,” Executive Director of Residence Life and Dining Services, Patrick Call said.

The staff thought the area coordinator positions were trying to take care of too many things at once, so they reduced to four positions to two and made some responsibility changes.

“When we looked at the area coordinator position, we realized that it had its feet in two different places. One was in the day-to-day management of the building as well as training, conduct and policy, and procedure. We decided we were a little top-heavy,” Call said.

After reviewing the positions, Residence Life and Dining Services decided it was time to make some changes to better benefit students. Call said after analyzing the previous structure of the residence life staff, he did not believe it was as centered around the students as it should have been, so it was reorganized to form a staff that would focus more on students.

A big part of the focus has been on training the residence hall staff to better serve the students, Area Coordinator Rian Rabideau said.

“A lot of our focus now has been planning and implementing training and overseeing community development,” Rabideau said.

Area coordinator Jenni Lindberg said she and her department are now trying to expand their outreach to the whole campus.

“We’re charged with continuing participation across campus. We’d like to continue and increase our collaboration with our other campus partners. We’re looking to do programs in the residence halls as well as on campus and how we continue to keep students engaged with not only our resources, but with our campus resources,” Lindberg said.

The staff not only wants students to have comfortable living facilities, they want them to be successful in school as well, Associate Director William Evans said.

“Our unit is now called residential education. We wanted to name our sub-unit based on what we do, which is really education outside the classroom. We want to support their academics and for them to be successful and to graduate while being integrated into the campus community,” Evans said.

In addition to the changes made for the associate director and area coordinator positions, new positions were also created in the reorganization.

The residence coordinator is a new position this year, which is similar to the hall director position from about 15 years ago.

Residence coordinators are intended to properly train the resident assistants, make sure the front desks of the halls are functioning properly, keep the hall senates lively and to develop a community among the residence halls, Call said.

“It’s not that our area coordinators in the past didn’t do those things, but when your time is split you can only do so much,” Call said.

Call also said the residence life community does not stop at the residence halls.

To make sure the apartments were still a part of UW residence life, a residence coordinator position was added to oversee the apartments, including Bison Run Village, Spanish Walk, River Village and Landmark.

Even though apartments are mainly for upperclassmen and are different from residence halls, Call says it is still important to create a community for all residents.

Bison Run Village is a mixture of the residence halls as well as an apartment complex. In the residence halls, most residents do not know their roommates prior to moving in, whereas when students move into an apartment they generally rent one with people they know.

At Bison Run Village living facilities are not leased per unit, but rather per bedroom. In most cases there are people living together who have had no prior relationship, which is similar to the residence halls but with the conveniences of an apartment, Call said.

“That’s something that we really want to focus on. We want a community in our apartments just as much as we do in our residence halls,” Call said.

Though residents my not be aware of the changes or directly impacted by them, Call says he thinks it will be beneficial to them.

“I really do think this is going to be a good organizational change for us. It has the mind-set that we’re here for the students and we’re going to continue to look throughout our entire department and focus on customer service and putting the students first in everything that we do,” Call said.

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The first of the cases happened in May of 2011 when UW student David Schmitt fell to his death after attempting to climb the upper deck of the stadium. Following Schmitt’s fatality, 43-year-old Erik Andrews had committed suicide by jumping off the southeast corner of the stadium two months later.

Although these were the only two incidents to have been reported happening at War Memorial, UW facility members want to take more preventive measures to ensure safety amongst individuals.

Officials have already indefinitely restricted access to the stadium after hours except to those members authorized in the athletics department. They have also increased security checks around the arena to prevent more misfortunes from occurring.

Michael Samp, chief of the UW Police Department, mentioned a few other adjustments that are being taken to improve safety in the stadium for the upcoming year. One of which is modifying the lighting which will improve

visibility, especially at night, which has been the leading concern. There’s also been a great deal of modifications being done to the fencing around the area which will hopefully prevent people from successfully breaking in. On top of those two main changes, facility members have also revised occupancy hours and have made some alterations to them as well.

Officials are taking a variety of precautions for future years to prevent other misfortunes like the two in the past from ever happening again. It’s their hope that those two cases will be the only ones to have ever happened in the history of War Memorial.

“In the long-term, I certainly feel these adjustments are going to make a big difference,” Samp said. “I think to in order maintain safety we just need to concentrate more on the things we’ve overlooked in the past.”

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Homeowner Bill Pratt and his wife were working in Woods Landing when they received the pre evacuation notice. “They said to leave,” Pratt said. The notice did not mention what items to take from their home. Pratt made sure his horses and dogs were looked after in nearby Laramie and that his children and wife were safe in Loveland, Colo. and Fort Collins, Colo.

“I was told to leave but of course I didn’t,” Pratt said.

Another Woods Landing resident stayed with his wife in a camper in Laramie. He left his sprinklers running on his roof in an attempt to fight the fire, the Associated Press reported.

The Fourth of July fireworks show was canceled in Woods Landing and surrounding communities to prevent further fires. In Colorado one homemade sign read, “FAIR WARNING: Anyone using or allowing use of fireworks in this neighborhood will be dealt with harshly! And that doesn’t mean just by the police!”

Firefighters from Big Laramie Volunteer Fire Department, Little Laramie, Centennial, Tie Siding, the Forest Service and hot shot crews from around the country fought the wildfire with engines, helicopters and airplanes from the Air Force according to Big Laramie Fire Fighter Larry Laflam.

“We work to help each other,” Bill Sheehan, Big Laramie firefighter and owner of Woods Landing, said. “We are a very close knit group and it’s nice to be a part of it.”

Saturday June 30 the local fire fighters fought to protect structures along Fox Creek Road.

“It was Hell there was fire everywhere,” Laflam said.

Laflam was riding in engine six fighting the fire and said “the glass was hot with flames.”

With the help of weekend rain the wildfire was declared 100 percent contained on July 9, according to the Albany County website.

Residents and local business made signs in support of the firefighters.  “The community stepped right up,” Laflam said. A local Quality Inn rented half price rooms, allowed late checkout and alowed pets for evacuees.

“All residents are relieved,” Sheehan said. “Hopefully nothing else will happen.”

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“Wyoming farmers and ranchers are struggling to work through serious impacts caused by drought,” Mead said.

If the declaration is granted, it could provide federal emergency assistance to Wyoming producers, according to a governor’s office press release.

“Over the past month, county commissioners throughout Wyoming have requested agricultural disaster designations for the 2012 agricultural production year. After consultation with the Wyoming Farm Service Agency it is clear that every Wyoming county with the exception of Teton County has suffered grazing loss and dry land hay loss in excess of the disaster threshold,” Mead said.

The Board of Albany County Commissioners found there is an extreme danger of fire throughout Albany County because there is a presence of an excessive amount of flammable materials and open burning and the use of incendiary devices aggravate the high fire danger.

Effective June 15 and until further notice any open fire, discharge of any common fireworks or display fireworks and the discharge of a firearm using incendiary or tracer ammunition is prohibited on all land within Albany County.

In addition to the drought disaster declaration, 12 counties, including Albany County, have instituted fire bans.

“There is a ban on fires on all state lands,” Mead said.

“The legislature had the wisdom to leave this as a matter of local control and the county commissioners are in the best position to review conditions near to home and decide which activities should be prohibited,” Mead said.

There are multiple exceptions that can be found on the Albany County website.

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Photo: Zoe N. McDonald

This fall Y Cross ranch could be sold, in a move that frustrates students, donors and the Wyoming community.

The 50,000-acre ranch sits in the heart of southeast Wyoming spanning 78 square miles between Laramie and Cheyenne.

A Denver philanthropist, Amy Davis, donated Y Cross ranch, cattle and machinery to CSU and UW in 1997 to aid agricultural programs.

Davis told the Associated Press, “I don’t think they’ve taken advantage in the last 14 years of what this ranch opportunity should have given to the students.”

“CSU professors didn’t know the ranch was available [for internships],” CSU summer ranch intern Ben Wurz said.

UW student, Drake Jorns, only knew about the internships when he looked up the ranch online.

“The ranch is intended to be a model of a working cattle ranch and to provide opportunities for students,” ranch caretaker Manny Monserrate said.

“Most students in the department now do not come from an agricultural background and are not familiar with agriculture in general. Internships on the Y Cross provide the much needed understanding of agricultural and the livestock industry from the ground up,” said Annette Monserrate in a letter to UW President Tom Buchanan.

“You can’t learn [ranching] in a classroom,” Jorns said.

“I’ve been ranching for almost 40 years and am still learning,” Manny Monserrate said. “We are here to teach the next generation how to work.”

To date, the ranch has had 25 interns and employees from both universities studying geology, range and wildlife management, and equine studies. The ranch also provides student scholarships.

“For the state of Wyoming to support the sale of a beneficial educational gift to the students of Wyoming and Colorado appears unethical and endangers the university’s Land Grant Mission,” said Annette  Monserrate in a letter to the state legislator. “Neighbors and the ranching community are aware of the facts surrounding the issue and are watching to see if the education of future leaders and the ethics of our political system are upheld.”

UW dean of the College of Agriculture, Francis Galey, told the AP, “It’s a very, very efficient and lean working operation. So the way it was set up staffing-wise, there just wasn’t a way to accommodate the teaching we wanted to do.”

In 2009, negotiations began for CSU to buy out UW’s portion of the ranch. The Davis Foundation agreed to help CSU purchase UW’s half of the ranch, but negations fell through as UW refused to be bought out.

The two schools attempted to trade Y Cross with land east of Laramie last year but decided that the land swap would not follow the intent of the gift.

In early June the presidents of CSU and UW met in La Jolla, Calif. to announce that they are moving forward with the sale of the ranch.

The ranch will be sold under a sealed bid method and could be sold early fall. Davis told the AP she estimates the ranch could be worth between $20 and $30 million.

The profits from the sale will be used to fund agricultural scholarships and internships at both schools.

Taylor Haynes, a Cheyenne area rancher told the AP, “Basically it’s a great teaching tool and it’s just too bad it would be gone.”

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Seeing a need for students to be able to make payments in a feasible manner, President Obama sped up this legislation to start in late 2012, rather than wait an additional two years to begin the new regulations.  For many students, this lifts some of the pressure they have for themselves on paying back their federal student loans.

Another enactment to the improvements deals with the Federal Application for Student Aid website.  According to the White House press release on June Sixth, the new application process, “Will create a streamlined online application process for Income Based Repayment (IBR), that allows student loan borrowers with federally held loans to import their IRS tax return income data directly into the IBR application.”

In prior years, a student wishing to apply for Federal Application for Student Aid would have to “fill in the blanks” when listing their income earned for the year, as well as their parent’s income.  For the student, this means they will no longer have to guess, and potentially make an error on their application, but rather upload the actual government paperwork showing the income of their parents and themselves.

Any sort of debt help for students with loans is a major turning point from times of before.  According to the National Student Loan Data System, students were looking at an interest rate of 6.8 percent starting in 2006 on their federal loans. However, since then they have seen a steady decline in the interest rate. Beginning in July 2011 and ending in June 2012 the rate declined to 3.4 percent. It should be noted though, that graduate and professional students will still see a steady 6.8 percent interest rate on unsubsidized loans.

UW students eligible for FAFSA, just as any other college student receiving federal aid, will benefit from this legislation.

According to the Office of Student Financial Aid, only 42 percent of students at UW are receiving some form of financial aid, compared to the 65.6 percent nationally receiving any form of aid. Though the average UW student is in less debt than the national average, this still helps.

For the Director of the Office of Student Financial Aid, Joanna Carter, this is a step in the right direction.

“I am always pleased to see students get a break on the cost of financing their education,”  Carter said.

With this new legislation being enacted, students should be able to look ahead to their future after college as more comfortable and relaxed as they pay off their education.

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Those who demonstrate that they meet the criteria will be eligible to receive deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal, and will be eligible to apply for work authorization.

“Our nation’s immigration laws must be enforced in a firm and sensible manner,” Napolitano said. “But they are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.”

The Department of Homeland Security continues to focus its enforcement resources on the removal of individuals who pose a national security or public safety risk, including immigrants convicted of crimes, violent criminals, felons, and repeat immigration law offenders. Today’s action further enhances the department’s ability to focus on these priority removals, according to a DHS release.

Later that day, President Barack Obama supported the announcement in a speech.

“Put yourself in their shoes.  Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life – studied hard, worked hard, maybe even

graduated at the top of your class – only to suddenly face the threat of deportation to a country that you know nothing about, with a language that you may not even speak,” Obama said.

The president went on to point out that both parties worked on the DREAM Act legislation, yet Republican Party members blocked efforts to pass the bill.

The bill hasn’t really changed.  The need hasn’t changed.  It’s still the right thing to do.  The only thing that has changed, apparently, was the politics,” Obama said.

Hecklers interrupted the president to raise concerns in regard to home land security and unemployment.

Concerning security, Obama said that border defense has been given priority and that more individuals are guarding the border than at any time in history.

“Today, there are fewer illegal crossings than at any time in the past 40 years.  We focused and used discretion about whom to prosecute, focusing on criminals who endanger our communities rather than students who are earning their education,” he said.

Obama responded to the shouted question of whether “foreigners” were infringing upon American jobs by saying that these undocumented individuals would help the economy through the added creation of business and in turn jobs.

And as long as I’m President, I will not give up on this issue, not only because it’s the right thing to do for our economy — and CEOs agree with me — not just because it’s the right thing to do for our security, but because it’s the right thing to do, period.

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An bird-eye view of the Wyo./Colo. wildfires just north of Laramie. PHOTO: Bob Sylar.

Cooler temperatures and calmer winds Wednesday helped quell a wildfire burning in a remote and mountainous area of the Medicine Bow National Forest in east-central Wyoming, giving firefighters time to reposition helicopters and other equipment before hot, dry conditions return this weekend.

The Russell’s Camp fire is located about 30 miles south of Glenrock and has burned about 4 square miles since Sunday.

It remained completely uncontained as of Wednesday afternoon.

But fire spokeswoman Laura McConnell said the eastern edge of the fire was relatively quiet after strong winds caused active burning the previous three days.

“It’s kind of light and breezy,” McConnell said. “It’s certainly not the sustained gusts and heavy winds that we’ve had the last several days.”

There are about 300 firefighters and six helicopters assigned to the fire — the cause of which remains undetermined.

“In talking with our safety officer and folks around base camp, it was pretty much a quiet day,” McConnell said.

McConnell said fire managers took advantage of the better conditions Wednesday to reposition the base for the helicopters.

“The helibase was getting moved closer to the fire so it’s a shorter turnaround time,” she said.

Hot, dry conditions that lead to more active fire behavior are expected to return by this weekend, McConnell said.

“Saturday and Sunday are looking as being two days of concern,” she said.

Elsewhere, a wildfire that began in Wyoming on Tuesday burned into northern Colorado, but firefighters have already managed 90 percent containment. The fire has burned about 550 acres of juniper and brush.

What ignited the fire is under investigation.

And Guernsey State Park, which was closed down by a 2,500-acre wildfire in southeast Wyoming last week, is now completely open, according to the state parks department. The park was partially reopened last weekend.

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NASA photo depicting the north Colorado wildfires and near Guernsey, WY.

Senate president, and acting governor, Jim Anderson activated the Wyoming National Guard to assist in fighting the wildfires in Guernsey. Senator Anderson is acting as governor while Gov. Mead is in China and Secretary of State Max Maxfield is out of the state.

The guard helicopters dumped water on the blaze while Guard members helped to alert residents and assist with evacuations. The team consisted of 41 Guard members, nine firefighters, two fire rucks and three Black Hawk helicopters, according to the governor’s office.

“We are glad we are able to assist in this firefighting effort,” Major General Luke Reiner, Wyoming’s Adjutant General, told the Associated Press. “The National Guard’s role is to assist when called by the governor and we are proud to have this role in protecting Wyoming’s residents and its natural assets.”

The state department has determined the fire to have human origins but the details have not been released.

Several wildfires are approaching Wyoming. Smoke from a New Mexico wildfire, that has destroyed 34,000 acres, covers the Cheyenne skies.

The High Park fire has burned over 70 square miles and is currently burning 50 miles southeast of Cheyenne, according to a recent AP story.

The fire originated from southeast winds blowing the smoke from New Mexico wildfires near Cheyenne.

A combination of decades of vigorous fire suppression and the waning of the timber industry over environmental concerns has left many forests a tangled, overgrown mess, subject to the kind of super-fires that are now regularly consuming hundreds of homes and millions of acres.

In southern New Mexico, a lightning-sparked fire raced across more than 34,000 acres in a matter of three days, damaging or destroying at least 224 homes and other structures in the mountains outside of the resort community of Ruidoso. Hundreds of residents remained out of their homes Wednesday According to a recent AP article.

Another fire about 15 miles north of Fort Collins has burned 73 square miles and destroyed hundreds of structures and forced hundreds out of their homes.  Over 600 firefighters are working to contain the blaze. The forest service has announced plans to start thinning the forest in an attempt to salvage property according to a recent AP story.

In Northeast Albany County an 8,500 acre wild fire is fully contained.

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Gov. Matt Mead meets in Beijing, China June 1 with New Channel International Learning’s Chairman and CEO Hu Min, as Carol Mead, Eleutian Chairman Bob Grady, Eleutian CEO Kent Holiday and New Channel VP John Gordon look on. Courtesy Photo.

Mead said that Wyoming is eager to capitalize on attracting diversified economic opportunities that add value to diversified natural resources.

The statement comes in light of a recent downturn in natural gas tax revenue numbers, which caused the governor to request 8 percent budget reduction proposals from all state agencies, including UW.

At an opening news conference, Governor Mead and Shaanxi Provincial Governor Zhao Zhengyong discussed advancing the collaborative relationship between Wyoming and Shaanxi Province, which share a reliance on natural resources, tourism and agriculture as economic drivers, according to a press release by the governor’s office.

Both governors agreed that continuing the relationship between Wyoming and Shaanxi Province offers many benefits now and in the future.

The 2012 International Advanced Coal Technologies Conference, hosted in Xi’an in the Shaanxi Province, is part of an ongoing collaboration among the University of Wyoming, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization – Australia’s national science agency – and Chinese counterparts to discuss advanced coal technologies, according to the release.

University speakers at the conference include UW Director of the UW School of Energy Resources Mark Northam, the university’s Carbon Management Institute Director Ron Surdam, Associate Professor in Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Mohammad Piri, CMI Senior Research Scientist Zunsheng Jiao, according to the conference schedule.

China has a strong demand for coal-fired energy. It is currently a leader in applying the most advanced coal technologies available; as such, it is a prime testing location for new coal technologies, according to the release.

The conference, which runs Monday and Tuesday in Xi’an, will include a discussion about coal chemical technologies, a number of sessions about carbon dioxide use, management and storage. The conference kicked off with presentations on the status and future development trends of energy and the chemical industry in Shaanxi Province, Wyoming and Queensland, Australia, according to the release. Two days of presentations will be followed by two days of field trips to view advanced coal facilities in Shaanxi Province.

David Demic

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