NEWS • PAGE A2
SPORTS • PAGE B6
WKU gives update on mold in Minton Hall
How Kentucky’s top prep scorer leads WKU with selflessness
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2019
WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY
VOLUME 94, ISSUE 19
A LIFE OF SERVICE Student served as aide to George H.W. Bush
BY LAUREL DEPPEN HERALD.FEATURES@WKU.EDU
O
n the evening of Nov. 30, 2018, former President George H. W. Bush laid in bed surrounded by his family as Ronan Tynan, a member of The Irish Tenors, sang him “Silent Night.” The president loved Christmas carols, and as Tynan sang by his bedside, he mouthed the lyrics with him. “You can’t help but maybe take a step back and kind of look at this from a historical perspective—but he wasn’t just a patient,” said Evan Sisley, Bush’s personal aide for the last four years of his life. “He was a mentor.” About four hours later, Bush died. “I didn’t stop as much to think about my place in it, because my place was to provide direct care,” Sisley said. “I was doing what I was supposed to do.” Behind a lens Growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the only things Sisley, an aspiring photojournalist, could cover without press credentials were protests. On Jan. 20, 2005, during former President George W. Bush’s inauguration, a group of anarchists attempted to storm through an entrance intended for the Secret Service. Sisley, a high-schooler at the time, had been following the group, known as the “black bloc,” around all day, taking photos of what ensued. Sisley got kicked and pepper-sprayed when the police apprehended the group. He called the Associated Press and offered his images from the incident—the first time he sold his photos. Sisley continued freelancing for Reuters and the Associated Press while in high school. Following high school, he started working for SIPA Press, now called SIPA USA, covering the White House and Congress. He was just 18. SIPA told Sisley he needed to go back to school. He looked for photojournalism programs. Sisley came to WKU because of the program’s success in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, founded in 1960. The WKU School of Journalism & Broadcasting’s photojournalism program has won first place in
PHOTO BY EVAN SISLEY
Evan Sisley (left) served as President George H. W. Bush’s personal aide for the last four years of Bush’s life.
PHOTO BY EVAN SISLEY
George H. W. Bush’s yellow lab service dog, Sully, lies in front of Bush’s casket during the former president’s funeral services on Dec. 2, 2018.
the Hearst photo competition 24 of the past 29 years. In April 2007, Sisley contracted for Time Magazine through SIPA to photograph the Virginia Tech University shooting, the deadliest school shooting in American history. Freelancing for Time made Sisley feel like he’d been drafted into the major leagues, he said. However, Sisley said after three days of photographing girls crying over the deaths of their sorority sisters, he walked into a bar, put his cameras down and realized he couldn’t do this kind of work for a living. “I didn’t know it before, but I knew it afterwards that I wasn’t really cut out to do spot news like that,” Sisley said. On the drive back to Bowling Green, Sisley decided he wanted to look into medicine instead. He said he thought it would offer a more direct way of helping people. SEE SISLEY • PAGE A6
Kentucky’s student loan debt continues to climb BY NICOLE ZIEGE HERALD.NEWS@WKU.EDU
Kentucky is continuing to face decade-long challenges to its higher education, including an increase in average student loan debt and a decrease in state funding per student. These challenges resemble a national trend in increasing student loan debt. The average student loan debt of stu-
dents from Kentucky’s public and private universities increased by nearly 100 percent from $14,250 in 2004 to $28,447 in 2017. In 2017, 64 percent of students also graduated with debt compared to 52 percent in 2004, according to information provided by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky CPE, said more than a decade of budget cuts to Kentucky’s higher education in favor of funding
Kentucky’s Medicaid expansion and pensions has placed a strain on the state’s budget. “This trend has become the most concerning to us,” Thompson said. “We’re at a breaking point now. If we don’t get more funding into higher education in Kentucky, it will start hurting the quality of education for our students.” Nigel Taylor, a senior from Winnetka, Illinois, is one of many college students at WKU who has taken out
student loans. Taylor, who is a finance, international business and Arabic major, said he has had to take out between $28,000 and $32,000 in student loans. Although his student loans have not impacted him yet, Taylor said he knows he will need to think about them later when making other financial decisions. He said Kentucky’s increasing amount of student loan debt makes sense because tuition has increased, SEE STUDENT DEBT • PAGE A7