Got a new mate? Get tested

WINONA, Minn., Dec. 31, 2003 -- The sex diseases seen most among Winona State students are chlamydia, human papilloma virus and herpes simplex virus, said university health Director Diane Palm. Occasionally she sees gonorrhea but hardly ever AIDS or syphilis. Palm said the common myth among students is that they won't get a sexually transmitted disease. It's not so and considering that 80 percent of the students have had sex before entering college the risk is high, she said. Students with a sex disease can get tested and receive antibiotics at the Winona State health services office, said Palm. She recommends getting tested after intercourse with a new partner. The health services tests for chlamydia by swabbing the vagina in women and the urethra in men. According to Palm, there is no test for HPV or HSV, which cause genital herpes. Palm said the problem with genital herpes is that students don't know they have it and often mistake it for a rash that goes away after time. Palm promotes STD prevention selling condoms, a dozen for $1. She has pamphlets on STD prevention Reporter: Jens Hanson

PALM WSU health services director TOP STD'S AT WSU Chlamydia Papilloma Herpes

UPCOMING CAMPUS EVENTS AND SCHEDULES
ST. MARY'S	SOUTHEAST TECH	WINONA STATE

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COMMENT: PEOPLE OF THE YEAR WINNERS AND LOSERS 2003 CAMPUS HEROES Quietly he did good things Ahmed El-Afandi. Far from home in an alien culture. with FBI agents looking for missteps, Islamic college students found caring mentoring in polysci prof Ahmed El-Afanidi. Himself Islamic, El-Afandi not only counseled Middle East and other Islamic students through their ongoing post-9/11 nightmare but also served as a bridge to a sometimes xenophobic Winona community. When fire damaged the downtown mosque, El-Afandi led the restoration project. His pending retirement from the faculty will be everyone's loss. MORE HEROES Seizing the future before it seizes us Darrell Krueger. Seeing bad times ahead, perhaps the worst in the university's history, Winona State President Darrell Krueger took charge. Rather than let budget-driven events force changes, Krueger involved everyone he could in a massive effort to, as he put it, "re-engineer the university." The project, funded with $450,000 scraped from other operations, began with focus groups and facilitators. The goal: A blueprint for a radically redesigned institution poised to meet challenges in a coming era of declining state financial support. Time is short. The proposal deadline: Fall 2004. MORE HEROES Jeff Sciurba. It didn't seem right that a university executive could steal the students' music, but it happened. When Jeff Sciurba began asking why the music video screens had vanished from campus cafeterias, all fingers pointed to Vice President Cal Winbush. Without consulting student leadership, Winbush had let a contract lapse for the NCT music channel. That would be high-handed and paternalistic enough, but Sciruba found worse. Winbush did it because he didn't like the implied sexuality in pop-culture videos, imposing his sense of what constitutes art on adult college students. Sciruba launched a petition drive. MORE HEROES Dylan Davis. Not one to let learning stop at the end of the semester, Dylan Davis asked what greater good he could put to what he learned in prof Pat Paulson's info-systems class. Voila, Student Booktrade was born. The site allows Winona State students to save a buck, selling and buying used textbooks. Davis doesn't make a cent. That wasn't his goal. Although the pandering used textbooks is a dubious business, and although the site has rough spots Davis nonetheless epitomizes one ideal, so seldom seen anymore, of contributing to a greater common good rather than one's own pocketbook. And from a business major, no less. MORE HEROES Campus muck- raker found a lot to rake in the booze scene Brian Krans. Disliked? Yes, even hated. But Brian Krans has his detractors for all the right reasons. In April his investigative reporting on the bar scene so riled the college booze crowd that somebody scrawled a death threat in a Winona State journalism lab: "Die Brian Kranz." He became persona non grata. Bouncers formed a phalanx to keep him out of downtown bars -- while, incredibly, letting under-age boozers in by the dozens. In October, Krans, a journalism senior, unleashed new revelations with the first hard data to support what everybody knew was true: The Warrior football team was infested with wildest partiers and drunks around. Krans counted 25 players with 36 convictions, prompting the university president to demand an accounting from the athletic department. Was this good journalism? Or just hanging out the dirty laundry? The Minnesota Newspaper Association had the last word. It honored Krans with its investigative reporting award. MORE HEROES Keith Schwab. Over the years he made lots of money off Winona State construction projects, but his final project was more about innovation and vision tha bricks and mortar. Keith Schwab masterminded the complex site acquisition and financing arrangement for the university to build the badly needed East Lake dorm at time when, by many measures, the university was flat broke. A university ancillary, the WSU Foundation, convinced the Army to donate an abandoned armory on Sarnia, then the Foundation borrowed the construction money and leased the 360-tenant to the university. Schwab died before students moved in, but his contribution to campus life lives on in the luxo-dorm complex. MORE HEROES Bob Keiper. He warned them, but they wouldn't listen. Bob Keiper, the city utilities supervisor, knew the crumbling city water system was insufficient to fight a major fire at the new East Lake dorm and that replacement water mains wouldn't be in service until months after occupancy. The rest of city officialdom and the university charged ahead anyway. When Keiper blew the whistle on the recklessness with student lives, officials gave incredibly self-serving responses: "Gee, we had no idea." "Pumps on fire trucks would boost the pressure." At Winona State, the people in charge said the building had lots of fire alarms and exits, which begged the question, especially considering the match-stick architecture and the failure of the univerity to enforce anti-boozing regulations at the dorm. Drunks set fires unwittingly and don't move too fast in getting out. MORE HEROES Fighting to keep East Lake off the tax roll Kent Gernander. Long-term Winona State advocate Kent Gernander was put to the test in 2003. Landlords, irate at losing tenants to the new East Lake dorm, pressed the city to deny the tax-exempt status that was at the heart of financing the construction. It was Gernander, on behalf of the WSU Foundation, who fought the legal challenges -- still an unsettled issue in the courts. Gernander, although not a Winona State alum, has a long record of energetic support for the university. He was the foundation president in 1986 and 1987, and then, as a past president, kept working to help nurture the foundation into becoming an ever-stronger generator of gifts for scholarships and important projects. MORE HEROES No- nonsense student represent- ative Robin Miller. Nobody in student government at Winona State University had a better grasp of issues and a knowledge of the mechanics for effecting change. Her no-nonsense approach led to tangles. Some student senators whose vision was limited to resume-building and ego-salving didn't much cotton to Miller's pressure to grow up and get real -- and left the Senate. Good riddance. What the Senate needed was the commitment of Miller's sort. While the Senate remained a revolving door, incredibly with more resignations than there were original ballot vacancies, the winnowing gradually promised to produce a more serious and effective voice for student interests. MORE HEROES Tom Grier. When advanced journalism students were casting for candidates for Person of the Year, they settled on Grier. As Winona State's communications director, Grier's 2003 accomplishments included a slick alumni magazine and a creative image-enhancing television and print campaign for the university. He pitched in to help the staff-short masscom department by teaching graphics to universal student acclaim. In walking the tight rope of media relations for the university, Grier earned respect from reporters as a straight shooter, even when he had to deal with institutional fumbles. At the same time, Grier kept the ear of Darrell Krueger on the president's inner circle. ALSO RANS CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR MUSA loyalties outbid service to his campus constit- uents Michael Hofland. Finally Winona State had a reform-minded student president. Michael Hofland was elected with ideas to make student government a potent voice for students. He saw Student Senate as more than a sand box. Alas, midway through his term, Hofland got sucked into the perqs of being on the Minnesota State University Student Association dole. Too often he was too busy defending the deeply troubled MSUSA to tend to campus issues. ANOTHER ALSO RAN WSU's grim reaper on the day the music died Joe Reed. The salaried Winona State University entertainment maven, Joe Reed, scored another success with the Counting Crows concert. Even homecoming, although handicapped by new rules and an early date, went well. But was Joe Reed all the advocate for students and their rights that we would expect of a student activities director? Nope, not after being the administrative lackey to remove 27 CTN screens from cafeterias because the music videos were too racy -- and hoping nobody would notice. LOSERS OF THE YEAR 2003 CAMPUS LOSERS SO GOOD YET SO BAD As they saw it, rules are for the other guys ANDREW BONNER MATT BROWN DANE CLARK NATHAN CODY KEVIN CURTIN JAY FOGELSON ED GILREATH NATHAN HALL ALAN HARTUNG TIM HODSDON PAT HURLEY AARON HUTCHINSON BRIAN HYNES RAYFIELD JOHNSON LUKE LOKANC DAN LUNDIN MIKE MCCANTS BRENDAN MEANY MATT MELINE KYLE MITCHELL ANDY NETT CALEB PADILLA ANDY SALMEN DERIC SIECK BRIAN WROBEL Warrior football team. The boozer-losers ruined it. The Winona State University football team's outstanding performance, making it into Round 2 of the NCAA regionals, was spoiled by a we're-above-the-law attitude of many players. Court records in Winona County alone found that the cops busted 25 players a total of 36 times. That's almost one-third of the roster. Most offenses were for excess-boozing and partying, some replete with sassing the cops and puking. It was not a pretty picture. These guys blew it as role-model ambassadors for the university. MORE LOSERS Writer;s cramp? Larry Holstad. The athletic director at Winona State is one busy guy, as he'll tell you. That's why, says Larry Holstad, he hasn't gotten around to drafting a report on athlete misconduct that was ordered by university President Darrell Krueger. First it was one week, then two weeks, now six weeks. There may be a difficulty in marshaling the facts to portray anything except top-to-bottom disregard among football coaches to enforce the university's student-athlete code of conduct. Plainly, team discipline was out of control -- with 25 players in court, mostly for alcohol-related offenses. One question is how much Holstad knew and when he knew it. A charitable explanation would be that Holstad never told Krueger about the problems, as required by the code, because he didn't know. Igorance is bliss? No, dereliction. MORE LOSERS Winning is golden, silence too Tom Sawyer. The Winona State football coach is good at winning. The Warriors finished the season 11-2. But at what cost? Sawyer went light in disciplining key players for off-campus drunkenness and other antics, taking advantage of discretion allowed him in the student-athlete conduct code -- pushups instead of suspensions, running laps instead of throwing the bumbs out. When reporters began asking about the misconduct, Sawyer ordered a lockdown on player communication with journalists -- a tactic he's used before when things got hot. Yes, winning is important but at what cost? The evidence looks like Sawyer sees the end justifying the means. MORE LOSERS He says he still aspires to a political career, but he may have tanked it early Tyler Despins. His past caught up with Tyler Despins, but he may have the Teflon of Ronald Reagan. The Winona State senior started the fall soaring, as one of three governor-appointed students on the powerful state college board of trustees. Then it came out that he had gone behind the back of the Minnesota State University Student Association to get the appointment. Then it came out that his application told only half of the story of his term as student president at Rochester Technical and Community College. He had listed being elected but failed to note that he had been impeached. The governor's screeners felt deceived and betrayed when they learned the whole story. The decision was made, however, not to rescind the appointment, which has left Despins spending more time explaining his lapse than discussing issues before on the trustees' agenda. Meanwhile, MSUSA leadership remains peeved at Despins' end run. MORE LOSERS Does his Patriot Act go too far? John Ashcroft. Although he's never set foot in Winona, the federal government's chief lawyer, Attorney General John Ashcroft, cast a long, dark shadow on campuses everywhere. His FBI interrogated Winona Islam students about links to terrorism. His two-year-old Patriot Act gave agents access to library records to compile dossiers on what people were reading -- without even having to make a case to a judge that spying into individual citizens' reading habits was warranted. Under Ashcroft, the historically vaunted American value of citizen freedom from government intrusion was under siege. Ashcroft's FBI even sent messages to the Winona police on controlling anti-war demonstrations. And this is America? MORE LOSERS We must protect the kids, even from them- selves Cal Winbush. Forty years after the concept "en loco parentis" had been to rest in the 1950s, the student affairs vice president at Winona State resurrected it. Acting as a parent, Winbush decided that the music videos on the National College Television network were too racy and should be banned for the sake of the students. It was a paternalistic insult to adult college students. Even when confronted with dozens of petition signatures, Winbush wouldn't back down. He wouldn't even admit he had been out of line, not even that he had been sneaky to drop the NTC contract during the summer when student government was dormant. If they remake the 1950s sitcom "Father Knows Best," Winbush should be dominated for the lead. MORE LOSERS Sara Lee Garcia. Perhaps because she's now gone, perhaps not, the dorms director at the Winona State West Campus took a lot of hits for out-of-control harassment at the Lourdes dorm. One floor supervisor, Robyn Hjorth, said Garcia tolerated a serial sexual harasser who, in one instance, manhandled Hjorth and broke her wrist. Hjorth's charges, in a complaint to the state Human Rights Department, allege a litany of horrific harassment and official inaction. Another supervisor, Megan O'Donnell, said she was harassed by male tenants after she busted one of them for boozing in the dorm. O'Donnell said she complained repeatedly to Garcia, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, a survey by journalist Alison Turner found that 50 to 70 percent of dorm tenants sneak booze by guards and drink the night away. MORE LOSERS "Perhaps one of the Africans playing the game has exposed them (the Vikings) to an exotic virus like the ebola." John Edstrom. Was it unfair that Daily News publisher George Althoff called rival publisher John Edstrom of the Post pigheaded. No. Althoff was right on. When Edstrom blamed the failing Minnesota Vikings defense on African players with the Ebola virus, right-minded people went ballistic. "Racist," they said. The mayor fired Edstrom from a city personnel board. The city Human Rights Commission went into high gear. Rather than apologize, Edstrom called his detractors too dumb to get his joke. He then erected a complex semantics explanation to excuse his language on the basis of cultural history. The problem was that Edstrom is as ignorant of cultural history as he is of cultural sensitivity. Then he said all the hullabaloo was a conspiracy directed by the "true racists," whose GPS he planted squarely at Winona State, City Hall, the Daily News and, would you believe, Wal-Mart. Yeah, it was far-fetched. Pigheaded too. MORE LOSERS No friend to higher-ed Tim Pawlenty. Never has Minnesota had a more anti-higher ed governor than Tim Pawlenty. He slashed funding to the colleges and triggered a 30 percent tuition increase over two years. The new tuition, however, doesn't offset the state funding cutbacks, putting campuses into budget crises that are translating into faculty reductions, larger classes, and curricular problems that preclude timely graduation for many students. In contract negotiations with unions representing campus workers, Pawlenty said take it or leave it, shifting millions of dollars in health coverage costs from the state to the employees and allowing miniscule wage adjustments. Minnesota's historic commitment to quality education as a route to a better future is going under, with Pawlenty our main grave-digger.

Democrat quits congressional race

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Assault reported at Schyde's

WSU football player to court yet again

BROWN Warrior guard

WINONA, Minn., Dec. 23, 2003 -- A Winona State University football player, senior guard Matthew Brown, 22, 427 Center St., paid a $115 fine in Winona County District Court for disorderly conduct. Police caught Brown taking a piss in the Hardee's parking, near the downtown bar district, just after all the bars closed. The fine was the 36th against a member of the Warrior football squad. The fine was Brown's third in Winona County. He was fined for a loud party during the 2001 football season and for minor possession of alcohol in April 2002. Background: Disorderly conduct charged

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Dorm proctor: I lived in fear of boozers

Holiday greetings from the CyberIndee

Our card to campus people everywhere

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