The Wichitan Online

Wichita Falls native Catherine Porter remembers when she first fell in love with orchids. The year was 1951 and her husband was stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Orchids grew everywhere on the island and were growing in coconut husks and baskets on the porches of homes around Pearl Harbor. Today, the 72 year old enjoys caring for and propagating her own collection of tropical beauties. She spends about an hour a day, seven days a week, caring for her collection of 200 various species of orchids. Annual re-potting can mean a half- day or more of work but Porter doesn’t mind. For her, it is a labor of love. “Once you’ve gotten one to come into bloom for a second time, it’s like having your first child,” she said. Porter is one of the 21-member Red River Orchid Society, which meets each month in MSU’s Bolin Science Hall. The group discusses a different topic each month, shows off their favorite orchids and socialize. Porter said while many people believe that it’s difficult to grow orchids, they are relatively easy to care for if you have a greenhouse. Burrel Gambel, RROS member, agrees. Gambel, a retired Air Force pilot, is past president and vice president of the organization and is currently president of the Oklahoma Orchid Society. “Being hard to grow, being delicate and being expensive are all myths,” he said. “They are easy to grow. You can even grow them on a window sill – anyplace you can grow an African violet, you can grow an orchid.” He said many varieties will thrive in dappled sunlight outdoors during the summer. He should know. Gambel’s orchid collection had recently blossomed to 1,000 with the purchase of a privately owned collection of 500 plants. “It’s an addiction,” he said, laughing. “But it won’t hurt you.” The quirky beauties are a hot commodity across the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported national sales are up 50 percent since 2000 and 2001 sales are an estimated $121,000. He received his first orchid plant - a cattelya, the common-corsage orchid - as a gift in 1977. “Not the easiest but not at all difficult to grow,” he said. Gambel said for most people, the phalaenopsis, or moth orchid, is the most rewarding orchid to grow as it blooms in a much shorter time than many other types. “The tropical varieties are the showiest and usually the largest,” he said. “And they tend to like the same temperature range as human beings like – around 70 degrees.” Orchidacea is one of the largest and most diverse family of plants, with about 25,000 species around the world. The are found on every continent except Antarctica. Gambel said their reputation is part of the See Orchid

SGA proposes new way to pay parking fines
Ashley Dennis and Erica Hernandez | The Wichitan

A resolution passed by MSU’s Student Government in March may provide students with an alternative to paying campus parking fines. The resolution, which is intended for students with fines over $100, was developed by Senator Aaron Wilson. It would allow students to perform community service on campus to work off parking fines. The idea appeals to MSU students like junior Hong Nguyen and freshman Shawn Brown. “Yes, I would rather do community service rather than pay out of my own pocket,” Nguyen said, “like make the campus look a little more friendly by planting trees.” Brown said he wouldn’t mind picking up trash around campus. “Painting stripes is cruel and unusual punishment, but I’d rather do that than pay,” he said. MSU Police Chief Michael Hagy said he isn’t sure this is the right way to approach it. Hagy said things like painting and filling potholes are not a police issue, they physical plant duties. “I’m not opposed to working with our students when it’s a compromise for both parties,” Hagy said. Parking fines are an important part of the local budget for the police department and are used to pay for officers’ salaries, student salaries and maintenance and operation. According to Stephanie Estrada, MSU police department, campus police write 50 to 75 tickets per day. In other SGA news, President Bren Romney discussed the issue of retention rates and what could be done to improve them. Student Senator and representative of the newly created Academic Advising Committee Ophetta David briefly spoke on the committee’s role in resolving the issue. “Some of the professors didn’t see a problem, so our first problem was changing the mindset of those professors,” David said. “We’re also looking into conducting a survey to See SGA

A $250,000 endowment received by the MSU Geology Program is helping to fund an Earth-monitoring laboratory currently under construction in Bolin Science Hall. The Earth lab will measure earthquakes, magnetics, gravity and water vapor and will contain a sophisticated mapping system known as a Geographical Information System workstation. Professor of geology John Kocurko will run and design the computer-operated laboratory located in Bolin Hall, Room 131. “It’s really a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” Kocurko said. “There aren’t too many labs that I’m familiar with anywhere that maintain all these instruments, let alone one or two.” Once the laboratory is completed, Kocurko plans to develop an introductory science course based on research done in the Earth Lab in which undergraduates can learn about earth magnetism, earth gravity, earth seismography and earth imagery. “The laboratory is specially designed to be used as a teaching tool and as a source of information for the public,” Kocurko said. “Everything should be functional within two years. Once that happens, the lab will pretty much monitor itself.” Most of the equipment used in the lab will be linked nationwide to other earth monitoring stations. The seismic station will be connected to the national Princeton Earth Physics Project, and the atmospheric water vapor monitoring station will be linked to the University of Texas at Austin. The GIS workstation will be linked to about five other states, but it can also stand alone and be useful. As an important tool for mapping, it is a system comparable to one a city would use in developing plans for neighborhoods, plotting water pipes, census mappings, geological field mappings, plotting highways, and See Lab

Beleagured intro honors class revamped
Diana Williams | For The Wichitan

MSU is looking to revamp its introductory honors course next fall after a string of problems threatened the course’s survival last semester. The class was first offered last fall to incoming honors students as part of a restructuring effort by the honors committee, but a series of setbacks and problems forced faculty to reexamine the course. “The purpose of the introductory honors class was to give incoming honor students, mostly freshmen, an idea of what the university offers and to introduce the students to a variety of professors,” said Michelle Smith, director of the honors program. The class was to be team-taught by four faculty members. The team was to focus on several areas including humanities, arts, politics and business. Four sections of the class were to be offered. However, two weeks before the start of the semester, with a combined registration of 75 students, the committee faced some serious problems. Smith cites a lack of available faculty as one problem. “It was a very difficult time for the university, a very tumultuous time with the change in the presidency, and this class almost got lost in the shuffle,” she said. Two weeks before the start of the semester the university pondered canceling the class. Smith said the solution was to have one instead of four sections. “I offered to coordinate the class and have guest faculty lecturers come in to speak on various topics,” Smith said. The faculty came from all six colleges, each giving a lecture on his or her area of expertise. “It was not intended to be a class of 75 but a promise was made to the students, so this was an emergency measure,” she said. The size of the class forced coordinators to change the course format. It was intended to be a participatory class that was more in keeping with an honors course, but it had to be changed to a lecture format. “I knew I would have to do something to break that lecture barrier,” Smith said. In an effort to combat the problem, a series of lectures were given. Then, the class was subdivided into its original sections with the lecturers. Several brown bag lunch symposiums were offered outside of class time and See Honors

Expert explains root of Palestinian conflict
Karri McGovern | The Wichitan

Staff photo | The Wichitan

Middle East expert John Duke Anthony, left, discusses regional conflicts with senior BAAS major Scott Auth.

The background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Arab views regarding Arafat and U.S. media bias were some of the questions a Middle East expert fielded during one-on-one classroom seminars last week. John Duke Anthony, president and chief executive officer of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, was at MSU following a Middle East Symposium co-hosted by the College of Liberal Arts April 9. He visited history professor Kenneth Hendrickson’s History of the Middle East class and participated in a seminar class on terrorism. Anthony explained the historical reasons behind U.S. support of Israel in the Arab conflicts, which he said pre-dates both Presidents Theodore Roosevelt’s and Harry S. Truman’s announcements of their pro-Jewish stance. “The steamroller had begun before then, with the Zionist’s movement rooted in late 19th century Europe and against the backdrop of pogrom concentration camps and restrictive covenants on Jews ability to own land in several European countries,” Anthony said. “There was a quickening intellectual and political movement that Jews would be forever discriminated against as a class and made to be a scapegoat, for instance, with people saying that Jews killed Christ.” Anthony said the Zionist movement, or quest for a national Jewish homeland, became officially organized following the 1898 conference in Basle, Switzerland, and the institutionalization of the World Zionist Organization. Despite early interests in other locations, a growing movement said the location had to be Palestine, because Jerusalem is in Palestine. According to Anthony, the British took on the cause to protect their interests in the Middle East and through the work of British statesman Arthur Balfour, produced an agreement with Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Jewish Zionist living in England, in 1917 that promised help in establishing a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine. He said the American branch of the World Zionist Organization, was led Louis Brandeis, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, at the time. It was his influence as a major confidant to President Woodrow Wilson and Wilson’s soft spot for Jewish desires that marked the starting point of the United States’ support. See Expert