Racial tensions erupt at mizzou, a6
The
LittleHawk
Iowa City High School • Iowa City, Iowa • Vol. 73 Issue 3 • Friday, December 18, 2015 • www.thelittlehawk.com ifuckedyourmom
A Dire Deer Situation The urban deer population has skyrocketed since the 1970’s. Iowa City debates how to control it.
By Jim Geerdes & Claire Goodfellow Although usually thought of as cute and fragile creatures, deer can cause serious harm. They destroy landscaping, kill trees, and lead to approximately 1.5 million car accidents nationwide every year, and their numbers are growing. “I hit a deer on Prairie Du Chien,” Jim McMillan ‘17 said. “I was shocked, it had just popped out of nowhere.” State Farm Insurance estimated that between 30,000 and 40,000
collisions occurred between June of 2013 and July of 2014. Iowa has also repeatedly been ranked among the top three states in deer-car collisions. “Safety needs to come first,” driver’s education instructor Terry Rew said. Rew hit a deer while traveling south on Highway 218 several years ago. Rew recommends using deer whistles on cars. Deer whistles make a high pitched sound, inaudible to humans, that supposedly repel the animals. Since the collision and the addition of whistles, he has not hit one since.
“Don’t break to miss them,” Rew said. “When you break, the front of your car goes down and that will just send them through your windshield, still kicking.” As Iowa City development expands, it continues to encroach on the deer’s natural habitats. Charles Bray, a Kent Park Ranger, blames the city’s deer problem on human development invading the deer’s habitat. “We build and we encroach on [their habitats],” Bray said. “Deer are very adaptive.” Deforestation in Iowa along with other environmental factors
PHOTO BY JIM GEERDES
have limited the deer’s natural living space, causing them to move into nearby urban areas. “There are a lot of deer here,” McMillan said. “But they were here first.” The rise in deer numbers has sparked controversy over how to contain the population. One of the ways Kent Park and Johnson County are addressing this problem is by having an annual deer bow hunt. Kent Park has set strict guidelines for the hunters in order to keep the hunt ethical and safe. cont. on A5
Iowa’s Ties to the Syrian Refugee Crisis By Sadie Hobbs & Lucy McGehee 4,283,224 refugees, more than the entire population of Iowa, are fleeing the familiarity of their home, in pursuit of a life without fear from oppression. The corruption left behind includes the growing strength of terrorism groups and the injustice performed by their government. “We do know that terrorism does exist. Extremists do exist in every religion and in every society,” Newman Abuissa, transportation engineer and native Syrian, said. “We cannot paint extremists on all of society.” Abuissa came to the United States to pursue his graduate education at the University of South Dakota. Upon completion, he accepted
a position at the University of Iowa, and has stayed ever since. Abuissa and his son, Yusef Abuissa ‘16, traveled to Syria in 2009 to visit their family. “I’d play soccer with the kids of nearby neighborhoods,” Yusef said. “All the food is locally grown. We would go buy bread in the morning so there was hardly any huge consumerism,” he said. “The traditions were more alive. You don’t really see that in America.” Syrians have been fleeing their country due to the ongoing violence and instability since its Civil War began in 2011. The resulting conflict has caused 320,000 deaths, with at least 12,000 of those deaths being children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Abuissa’s brother still resides in
Syria, and serves a community in Damascus as a pharmacist. According to Abuissa, the area’s population has doubled, and as safe places are now hard to come by, his brother is currently serving four times as many people as he used to. “He likes the country and he’s serving the people. Somebody said that you don’t run away from your mother when she’s sick and needs you, so that’s the way he feels [towards his country],” he said. “He can provide a service and his services are needed, so he can’t just leave.” Recently, Iowa’s governor Terry Branstad formally requested denial of Syrian refugees into Iowa because of safety concerns following the terrorist attacks in Paris. cont. on A3