In November a vandal or vandals struck the men’s bathroom in the lower level of The Union. Today a custodian found the markings again. There are two drawings. One is a balloon on the back of the stall door with writing that says, “be open minded.” The second is a design using hatching marks on one side of the stall.

Mark Venhizen, technical manager for The Union, said a work order has been placed for a security camera in the hallway outside the bathrooms.

Eight words went through Jill’s head again and again as she drove back to Brookings.

“Do you want to know if it’s twins?”

That was four years ago, in the second semester of Jill’s freshman year, when she had an abortion. Her husband David is still the only one who knows.

“I got pregnant, and I got scared,” she said.

At the time she and David were dating, and neither wanted to have an abortion. But it was the only way Jill could hide the pregnancy.

“I considered adoption,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘I’m going to get big. I’m going to show. People are going to know that I’m pregnant.’”

Despite what she chose, Jill has always been against abortion.

“I thought growing up, ‘How could someone do that? How could they kill their baby?’” she said.

But she couldn’t bear the shame.

“I come from a very conservative family,” she said. “Looking back, they would have accepted it eventually. It would have been fine, but immediately I was just struck with fear.”

In the United States there are two main types of abortion: in-clinic and a pill form. Jill decided to take the pill because it seemed like the easiest option.

David was “just as confused” about abortion as Jill was, she said. He didn’t want her to do it, but he said he would support her in whatever she chose. She called Planned Parenthood in Sioux Falls, the only abortion center in South Dakota, and asked about the pill.

“They said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s not a problem,’” she said. “Like really nice. There was not a tone of somberness.”

One weekend when David was gone, Jill drove to Planned Parenthood by herself.

“They make you fill out so many forms beforehand just to make sure you’re absolutely sure,” she said. “I remember just going through the motions filling it out — just no emotion.”

After paying $330 with cash, she sat in the waiting room.

“No one looked at each other,” she said. “No one tried to talk to each other or anything.”

Eventually a nurse called Jill into a room for an ultrasound.

“‘Do you want to know if it’s twins?’” the nurse asked.

Jill said yes, and the nurse told her it wasn’t. Then the nurse asked if Jill wanted to know the sex of the baby. Jill said no.

She was then taken into another room where the nurse gave her the pills.

“It was very — it was really strange,” she said. “They treated it almost like you were going in for a headache.”

First, she had to take a pill that stopped all development of the baby. It was her last chance to back out.

“And I did it,” Jill said. “I took it.”

Then she was asked to put four smaller pills on the inside of her mouth, which caused her uterus to contract so her body would expel the baby. All Jill felt were cramps.

Then came the 59-mile drive back to Brookings.

“I just remember I drove home and sobbed,” she said. “I just lost it.”

Jill called her husband that night, who had been looking at baby pictures online that day. He “just sat at his computer, and he sobbed,” she said.

“I remember laying on the couch for two days,” she said. “I had done something that every part of me knew was wrong.”

Now, four years later, Jill is still “haunted” every day.

“After I had done [the abortion] I started researching it,” she said. “It has a heartbeat. It has fingernails. It has all that stuff. It is a human that I murdered.”

Jill was raised going to church and has always called herself a Christian. She has been involved in churches in Brookings, as well as different campus ministries. After the abortion, she can clearly remember a turning point.

“After a while God met me, and I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I just remember sobbing one day, screaming for forgiveness — crying out to God for forgiveness,” she said. “And I just felt peace.”

But she is still weighed down by guilt and the pressure of keeping a secret.

When she was pregnant, she thought telling her family was impossible. Now, hiding the abortion is worse.

“I’ve prayed for courage to tell them,” she said. “And I’m still praying for that. I’m just not ready for my mom to see me like that.”

She’s worried about what her friends would think, too.

“Whenever the topic comes up I get really uneasy,” she said. “But I don’t try to play the victim card because I know exactly what I did.”

Jill wants other women to make a different choice than she did.

“You’ll never regret letting your baby live,” she said. “… You will regret [aborting it]. I’m a strong a person. I don’t cry easily. But I regret it every day.”

Firefighters work to put out the remains of the fire at the SDSU Cow/Calf Unit around 9:30 a.m. (photo by Andrew Turner)

A fire early this morning took out the entire middle section of the SDSU Cow/Calf Unit, said Shawna Reuer, the student employee on duty.

Reuer, a junior animal science major, was checking the cows for new calves.

“It was about a quarter after 4 a.m., and I started noticing there was something different in the air,” Reuer said.

She stepped outside and saw “one of the big windows engulfed in flames.” She immediately called the Brookings Police Department and then let out the livestock.

The SDSU Police Department and the Brookings Police and Fire departments responded within 15 minutes, she said, and the fire was under control around 8 a.m. Mike Lockrem, director of Marketing and Communications at University Relations, said no person or animal was injured.

Brookings Fire Chief Darrell Hartmann said the fire has been contained and will not spread to the north or south wings.

The middle section of the Cow/Calf Unit caught fire early Friday morning. Firefighters were able to contain the fire before it spread to the north and south wings. (Photo by Andrew Turner)

Reuer said it took a while for the fire to be contained because of the vehicle equipment, three propane tanks and abundance of straw and hay in the building.

“There was just so much fuel for the fire to just keep going,” she said.

Hartmann said the cause of the fire is currently unknown, but a tractor that was plugged in overnight is one of the suspected possibilities. No foul play is suspected.

Because of the extensive damage, Lockrem said the unit may be relocated.

“Bottom line is no one’s hurt,” said Bob Otterson, executive assistant to the president.

Photographer Andrew Turner contributed to this report.

Michel Chikwanine visited the Performing Arts Center at 8 p.m. Oct. 25 to tell his story about being a child soldier for two weeks. When he was five years old, he and his 12-year-old friend Kevin went to play at the local field. Kevin passed him the ball, and he shot it in the net. He started celebrating, but then he was stopped. (Collegian photo by ReAnn Arcand)

“I never saw them stop at a soccer field,” Chikwanine said. “As I turned around to scream, ‘Goal,’ I heard a gunshot.”

Rebel soldiers had arrived, and they forced all the children into their trucks.

“They grabbed my left arm, and they grabbed a knife and slashed my wrist,” Chikwanine said. They then put a mixture of cocaine and gun powder into his open wounds to make him become crazy and follow their orders, which involved killing other children.

“I looked in front of me and I saw my best friend Kevin lying in a pool of his own blood,” he said, adding that he was holding an AK-47 in his hand.

Chikwanine was a child soldier for two weeks, to which he said he was “very, very lucky.” He managed to run away, but “many child soldiers spend their whole lives as soldiers,” he said.

According to a BBC News article, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has an estimated 30,000 child soldiers. Chikwanine, now 23 years old, is from Beni in the DRC, and he has seen extremes of both evil and kindness. Now, he talks about these experiences at locations across North America.

His most recent location was SDSU. At 8 p.m. Oct. 21, hundreds of students filed into the Performing Arts Center to hear Chikwanine tell his story.
Chance Nkundimana, a freshman political science major, sat two rows from the stage. Like Chikwanine, he is from the DRC, and he his memories have scarred him as well. He witnessed the Gatumba Massacre, a mass killing of more than 150 people. Nkundimana said he and Chikwanine “connected.”

“He talked to my heart,” he said. “My tears were rolling down.”

Chikwanine gave a brief summary of his life story, which included the importance of his family.

“The thing that I love most about the town of Beni is this man,” Chikwanine said as he brought up a picture on the screen, “My father.”
Chikwanine’s father, a politician in Beni was a human rights activist, which caught the attention of rebel soldiers.

“The rebel soldiers hated my father,” Chikwanine said.

He went on to describe an experience he had as a 10-year-old in 1998.

“I remember it was a Friday afternoon when I was doing homework,” he said. “I heard gunshots.”

At the time, his dad was away from home.

“I remember I told my dad that if he left at anytime I would stand up and be the man of the house,” he said.

So he left his bedroom to check on his mom and sisters downstairs.

“I was 10 years old and I was forced to watch my mom and sisters raped right in front of me,” he said, explaining that one of the soldiers threatened to shoot him if he closed his eyes.

It became too much to watch, though, and Chikwanine ran at one of the soldiers, who ended up slashing his face with a machete.

“I fell to the ground,” he said. “And with a bloody face I heard my mom screaming for help.”

It was these memories he shared that left the audience members shocked and horrified. But, people did not leave the PAC describing the presentation as negative.

“I’m very hopeful,” Chikwanine said. “It’s very easy to be cynical, and it’s very easy to be angry. Being angry and sad will never take m

Carson Powell was 21 when he died Oct. 11. (Photo submitted by Hickey Funeral Chapel)

Carson Powell, a 21-year-old former SDSU student, died Oct. 11.

Powell was found at a residence on the southwest corner of Lake Goldsmith, just outside Volga, S.D. Scott Sebring, Brookings County assistant sheriff, said the Brookings County deputies responded at approximately 3:43 p.m.

Powell’s family asked that the details of his death not be disclosed.

During his time at SDSU, Powell was an agronomy major, as well as a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity.

His funeral service will be at 10 a.m. Oct. 15 at the Zion Lutheran Church in Chamberlain, S.D. Visitation will be Oct. 14 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hickey Funeral Chapel, and a prayer service will follow at 7 p.m. at the Zion Lutheran Church.

Barry Davis, a junior computer science major, snapped a picture of the USD billboard a few miles south of Brookings. The coyote carcass hung for a few hours Tuesday.

A dead coyote was hung on a controversial USD billboard in eastern Brookings Tuesday, and was met with several comments on Facebook after a photograph was posted on the website.

The billboard, installed last month, says, “Have an old friend for dinner,” with an illustration of a coyote chasing a jackrabbit. It shows the date of the next scheduled football game between the two schools in November 2012.

Barry Davis, a junior computer science major, posted a picture of the hanging coyote on Facebook around 3 p.m. At 6:47 p.m., the post had 84 likes, 22 shares and 23 comments.

“It’s very funny,” Davis said. “I think [the rivalry] is going to bring a lot of fans next year.”

Davis said he has “no idea who did it,” but he would “like to congratulate” whoever did.

The coyote was removed by 6 p.m. The Brookings Police Department did not take the dead animal down and is unsure who is responsible for the act.

Miss SDSU Heather Johnson

Heather Johnson was 13 when she left her home.

It hasn’t been an easy road. Johnson and her two brothers went from foster home to foster home until she was 7, and then from family member to family member. Their mother raised them, and they were neglected, abused and malnourished.

Now at 21, she is a senior political science major as well as the current Miss SDSU.

“I don’t tell a lot of people,” Johnson said, adding that she felt embarrassed. “ … It’s not something I’ve wanted to talk about or wanted people to know.”

Johnson was adopted at age 13 by a family she babysat for, and in 2008 she enrolled at SDSU – the first person in her family to attend college. She became involved with various activities on campus – especially dance – before winning the Miss SDSU pageant in March.

She was the second runner up at the 2011 Miss South Dakota Pageant, her platform a presentation titled “Stop the Cycle of Domestic Violence.” She contacted the Brookings Domestic Abuse Shelter and is now partnering with them to promote the 5th annual Cycle to Stop the Cycle, an event to raise funds and awareness about domestic abuse.

Before taking up this cause, Johnson never talked about her past.

“I put on this smile and just pretended it didn’t happen,” Johnson said. “I don’t want people to look at me differently and think, ‘Oh, she’s a victim of domestic violence.’”

But now, her new role as Miss SDSU has given her a purpose, making it easier to open up about her own personal experience.

“Having the opportunity to partner with the shelter and make domestic violence my platform makes everything I went through worth it,” Johnson said. “The pain I endured can now provide strength for others.”

The cycle is on Sept. 24. Early registration is closed, but anyone can sign up at the event. Registration begins at 8 a.m. at the Brookings Chiropractic Center located at 3405 Sixth Street starting at 9 a.m. The cost is $30 for individuals and $60 for families.

Ashley Dahl, the shelter’s associate director, said the goal is to raise $10,000, all going toward the shelter.

They hope for 200 riders this year, which would be 100 more than last year.

One of Johnson’s responsibilities has been to promote the event to students, which hasn’t gone as successfully as she hoped.

“It’s harder than I thought to get campus involved, which is really kind of a shame,” she said said.

And it hasn’t just been students with a low response.

“Overall this year, we don’t have a lot of people pre-registering,” Dahl said. “We’re hoping people will just show up on the 24th.”

There will be four bike routes: 3, 6, 24 and 40 miles. After the ride, there will be cookies, massages and live entertainment.

The Brookings Domestic Abuse Shelter is just one of three domestic abuse shelters in South Dakota. Last year, it served 412 women, 69 of whom stayed at the shelter with their children. Services like support groups and legal advocacy are available to both men and women, but only women can stay overnight.

Johnson said lack of awareness of domestic violence is one of the biggest issues – especially, she said, when it comes to child abuse.

“How are you supposed to get good grades? How are you supposed to eat?” she said. “It needs to be a bigger issue. And education, I think, is key.”

In the past two years, Johnson was forced to endure more tragedy. Both her mom and her older brother committed suicide. She said that for some reason, they weren’t able to “make it out” like she was.

“I’m really religious, and for some reason God just gave me the strength to get through it,” she said.

She plans on using her story and her Miss SDSU title for a purpose.

“It’s so much more than wearing a shiny, inanimate object to me,” Johnson said. “It’s what I can do with the crown.”

Reporter Jordan Smith contributed to this report.

Brookings City Council unanimously voted to grant Buffalo Wild Wings the license for $25,000 on Aug. 30.

The franchise will be located in the Village Square shopping center, near Dunham’s Sports. An opening date has not been announced, but Students’ Association President Mark York said the unofficial timeline is February or March.

The franchise won the license over Main Street Pub and Grill, Old Market Eatery and Whiskey Creek Steakhouse. The Council is discussing the option of allowing Old Market Eatery to temporarily use the license until Buffalo Wild Wings opens, but nothing has been decided.

York and SA Vice President Anthony Sutton were at the meeting to advocate in favor of Buffalo Wild Wings.

“After it passed, I got a text from a friend of mine,” York said. “The text said, ‘victory tastes like chicken.’”

Also new to Brookings is the Ground Round, which opened earlier this month. The restaurant replaced the Pavilion Bar and Grill.

Seventh-grader Sydnie Bentaas hands out water to one of the runners.

Gatorade! Water! Gatorade! Water!

These were likely the most-heard words at the water and aid station 7 miles in to the Brookings Marathon at 8:30 a.m. May 14.

“We’re waking up the neighbors,” said Nancy Flynn, a volunteer who lives close to the aid station, as she cheered on runners. “It takes guts to stand here and ring a cow bell, but they seem to be enjoying it.”

The weekend races have almost 1,000 runners participating. The 5K and kids marathon were run in the evening May 13. The full, half and relay marathon started at 7 a.m. May 14 at Pioneer Park, where they also finish.

Runners appreciate the volunteers at the fourth aid station on the course for the Brookings Marathon.

Flynn has been volunteering at the Brookings Marathon for five years.

“It’s exciting to watch masses of people coming,” Flynn said as she looked westward down 5th Street. “I just like getting people excited about stuff.”

On the corner of 5th Street and 8th Avenue, Flynn was part of a group of people handing out drinks to the runners.

Sydnie Bentaas, a seventh-grader from Brookings, was also volunteering – making it her second or third year, she said.

“It’s kind of nice to have a few extra helpers,” Bentaas said. “And it gives me a reason to yell.”

Bob Broschat offers water and Gatorade to the runners.

Bob Broschat and his wife live in the area as well, and they’ve volunteered for multiple years. Broschat said they “want to help the runners.”

According to the Marathon Spectator Guide, the Brookings Marathon started in 1970, and almost 400 volunteers make it happen every year.

Runners for the Brookings Marathon start their 8th mile going east down 5th Street.