Author Spotlight
Lizzie Kahle
On Nov. 9, eight senior students signed with colleges to further their sports careers.
Zeb Vermillion signed for baseball at University of Arkansas, and Luke Anderson signed for baseball as well at University of Missouri. For volleyball, Emma Henderson signed at Central Connecticut, Sarah Maddox at Mississippi State and Ally Offerdahl at Central Missouri. Elizabeth Braly signed with Kansas State for rowing and Brooklyn Walters signed with Fort Scott Community college for softball. Last but not least, Crissie Bloomquist signed for swimming at Kansas University.
Henderson committed to the University of Central Connecticut her junior year, after debating between University of Southern Illinois and Belmont. She was surrounded by her friends and family Wednesday as she made her decision.
“I have been wanting to play [in college] since 7th grade,” Henderson said. “This was kind of like the final step in my journey. Making it official was very exciting.”
Four Kansas Supreme Court justices are facing a campaign to oust them based on past high court rulings overturning death sentences. Chief Justice Lawton Nuss and Justices Carol Beier, Dan Biles and Marla Luckert will face a statewide yes-or-no vote on whether they stay on the court for another six years.
According to kansansforfaircourts.org, in 2013, Governor Sam Brownback changed the way judges and justices were chosen to give him more influence. This way, he could pack the courts with his supporters more loyal to a political ideology than to the Constitution and the law.
The court’s critics are particularly upset about July 2014 rulings overturning death sentences for Jonathan and Reginald Carr. They are also upset about three instances this past year where death sentences were overturned.
Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994 but no one has been executed since, with the state Supreme Court overturning death sentences seven times in 20 years. Five of those decisions were later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, including the Carr rulings.
Vine, an app for letting people share six second videos that has been popular since 
2013, will be deleted off the app store in the upcoming months. Before its launch in 2013, Twitter bought Vine in 2012 for $30 million, seeing it as a way to mimic Twitter’s short-form text posts.
One of Vine’s main features, loop, was the way a Vine endlessly rewound itself after completing – like a GIF with audio. Features like these are what sparked Vine’s mass popularity for allowing people to be creative in a short amount of time. Yet, Vine couldn’t compete against other rising apps like Instagram and Snapchat.
Instagram used to allow for 15 second 
videos, eventually bumping it up to a more flexible 60 seconds earlier this year. Vines didn’t break the six second barrier until earlier this year, and its extended videos never caught on. According to appadvice.com, Instagram brought attention that Vine found diffic
ult to match. Marketers began shifting their money away from Vine and stars followed.
This past summer, Vine executives began to leave the company because they saw it in turmoil. Twitter explored selling the app, but they never found a buyer. What stemmed the lack of vision for the ap was the loss of leadership it faced this summer. In consequence, this left Vine users upset about the ending of the app.
“I feel like I’m losing my memories from when I was young,” sophomore Hallie Higgason said. “It was so fun to make them when I was in middle school and now, they are all going to disappear.”
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