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Campus Quotes
Campus Awareness
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What do you think about student gun rights on campus?
One in 110 children will be diagnosed with Austism, learn how UCO students are bringing awareness to UCO’s campus.
The International Student Council and International Services took approximately 40 international student to experience Spring break.
UCO Golf dominates in the 61st Annual Southern California Intercollegiate Championship.
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THE VISTA
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA’S student voice since 1903.
ANNUAL DISABILITY AWARENESS EVENTS COME TO UCO NEXT WEEK
MAR. 24, 2011
UCO PAINTS THE CAMPUS HOLI PHOTO BY GARETT FISBECK
By Brittany Dalton Staff Writer
Next week, March 28-30, UCO will be hosting the annual Disability Awareness Week. The events are sponsored by Students for an Accesible Society (SAS) and are intended to raise awareness and understanding for those living with disabilities. The event will feature daily events from 10 am to 2 pm by Broncho Lake, free and open to the public. On Monday, there will be visual challenges. Participating individuals will use blindfolds, goggles, and canes to gain an understanding of the challenges faced by the blind or visually impaired. “Events like this give people that don’t have disabilities to experience, for a few minutes, what it’s like to have [a disability],” said Michael Hendricks, president of SAS. In addition, the participants will have to navigate around obstacles including trash bins, tables, and other people. Others will have to solve a jigsaw puzzle, or write or draw, while blindfolded. Tuesday’s event will focus on learning disabilities, offering games and tests to show the challenges posed by learning disabilities. Spelling tests and finger spelling will be offered, as well as a hearing loss simulator to also highlight the issues faced by the deaf or hearing impaired. Wednesday, physical challenges will be held to offer the participants a chance to maneuver through a maze in a wheelchair, considered the minimum standard according to the Americans with Disabilities Act recommendations.
WEATHER TODAY
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The UCO Indian Student Association celebrates the arrival of spring with the religious celebration known as Holi with food, music and a traditional water balloon fight Tuesday evening at East Field.
By Cody Bromley / Staff Writer Spring has now officially begun. Trees are blooming, flowers are growing and on Tuesday evening water balloons full of colored water splashed across East Field. The balloons were not just for fun, but also for tradition. Holi is a religious holiday celebrated in India, and other countries with practicing Hindus and Baha’is, welcoming the rejuvenation of spring through a special celebration of color. Resident assistants and the UCO Indian Student Association put UCO’s special celebration of Holi on Tuesday evening, but the idea to bring the event to UCO came from West Hall RA Amanda Collins after taking a mission trip to India. “One of the things that we did while we were in India was took surveys. One of the questions on the survey was, ‘What is your favorite festival here in India?’ Well the top two were Diwali and Holi,” Collins said. Collins said she did not know much about Diwali, known as the festival of lights, but the idea of a Holi game sounded like a lot of fun. “I saw photos, all my friends were talking about all these fun things they did. I just had to do it,”
Collins said. The planning for the event started over a month ago, but students like Manisha Patel, a senior chemistry major and president of UCO’s Indian Student Association, were filling up some of the 1,500 or more water balloons and preparing other last minute arrangements on Monday and Tuesday. Patel said that her organization was already thinking about having a Holi celebration, but were faced with the problem of finding a venue. “Then Amanda finds me in the international office, gets my contact info and she says, ‘Hey I went to India last summer. I heard about this game and I want to put it here as a tradition at UCO.” So I was like, ‘Man. I’m so lucky to have found this girl,’” Patel said. At 5:00 p.m. Tuesday evening, a line of people queued up just north of the business building right outside the gate to East Field where as they entered were given white t-shirts. The event kicked of around 5:30 with a prayer, also known as a puja, to the gods Krishna and Genesah by Justin Vineyreddy, junior biology and philosophy major and president of UCO’s Baha’i Club. After the prayer, students from the Indian Student Association did a fashion show of traditional
Indian clothing, and then performed some Bollywood dance routines. Before the tubs of balloons and powder were rolled out, event goers got a taste of India with some biryani from Gopuram, an authentic Indian restaurant in Oklahoma City. After everyone had a chance to eat, the tubs of balloons were carried out on to the field, and bags of powder scattered. The game of Holi begins with a traditional first throwing of colored powders, but after that, it was open season for water balloons and powder. The crowds tore into the water balloons, quickly hurling them across the field at bunch of people surrounding other tubs. Friends became targets, and strangers become allies in a war of fun, color, and being extremely messy. The fight lasted under ten minutes, but when it had finished, a clean shirt was hard to find. At the end of the night, with stained clothes and smiling faces, the crowd of people left to wash up. Collins and Patel both said they believed the event a success, and so did the people in attendance. “It was awesome,” Kevin McCoy, sophomore broadcasting major, said. “We need to have one everyday.”
State Government
GUNS APPLYING FOR ADMISSION By Ryan Costello / Managing Editor
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More weather at www.uco360.com
DID YOU KNOW? The name “Oklahoma” comes from the Choctaw words: “okla” meaning people and “humma” meaning red, so the state’s name literally means “red people.”
A wave of proposed legislation seems poised to substantially alter the landscape of firearm accessibility in Oklahoma, including guns on campus. This month, a pair of proposed bills, Senate Bills 858 and 129, were passed in the Oklahoma State Senate. SB 858 would allow all students and faculty with concealed carry licenses on Oklahoma campuses to carry concealed firearms at school. Currently, guns are prohibited on school grounds. SB 129 would establish the controversial right to openly carry firearms for all citizens at least 18 years old, without a license or training. Both bills were introduced by District 45 Sen. Steve Russell (R-Oklahoma City) and passed with overwhelming support in the heavily Republican state senate. The proposed pieces of legislation are currently being considered by the Oklahoma House Public Safety Committee, which is comprised of 12 Republicans to just five Democrats.
If guns are allowed at Oklahoma colleges, the state will join Michigan, Utah, Colorado and Virginia as the only states with firearms on campus.
If the bills survive a vote of the State House in general session, it would need only a signature by Governor Mary Fallin to become law with a proposed effective date of Nov. 1.
Fallin’s camp hinted to NewsOk. com that Fallin would sign. “I think we will wait and see what gets to her desk, but she supports the concept of open carry in general,”
Alex Weintz, a Fallin spokesman, said. At the state Capitol’s “Higher Education Day” last month, Russell told the Associated Press that prohibiting guns on campus creates a danger for students and faculty. “Those signs don’t do anything but create a cornucopia of defenseless citizens who become easy targets for these criminals,” Russell said. Russell did not immediately return calls seeking comment for this article. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education Chancellor Glen Johnson spoke against firearms on Oklahoma campuses at the same event. “Keep those bills in committee,” he said. If any Oklahoma campus were to allow firearms, it would make the state the fourth in the nation to have guns at universities. Twenty-five twoand four-year institutions in Colorado, Utah, Michigan and Virginia allow guns on their grounds. Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Mich. Allows guns on the general
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