“Knowing, because of my efforts, that maybe someday others or myself will benefit toward the research of finding a cure for cancer feels good. If I take a stand for a good cause, maybe others will do the same,” he said. This is also the guiding principle behind St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

St. Baldrick’s Foundation began March 17, 2000, in New York City when John Bender, Tim Kenny and Enda McDonnell turned a St. Patrick’s Day party into a head-shaving event to benefit children with cancer. They hoped to raise $17,000, but surpassed that goal to raise a total of $104,000 — over six times as much as they originally anticipated. This also explains where the foundation gets its name, substituting ‘Bald’ for ‘Pat’ in St. Patrick’s to come up with St. Baldrick’s.

St. Baldrick’s Foundation has since become the second-largest volunteer-driven organization providing research grants for childhood cancer. The foundation raised more than $28 million in 2011 and $26,441,926 so far in 2012. Donors, shavees and supporters of this cause will gather at the event to collect funds and promote a cure for childhood cancer. The St. Baldrick’s event coming to SDSU was organized by Sigma Lambda Chi, which has a fraternity mission of giving back to the community.

Jessica Weiss, a junior construction management major from Sonda, N.Y., is a member of SLC and one of the event organizers. She said this event is especially important to her as a mother.

“I would do everything in my power to ensure my daughter’s safety, so being a part of a charity that will help families stay together and help find a cure is very dear to me,” she said.

Norma Nunsz-Chandler is also in the construction management program and is shaving her head in honor of her daughter-in-law, Teresa Boettcher, who is a seven-year survivor of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“This cause is important because children should not have to deal with cancer and the challenges that come with treatment. I dealt with cancer as an adult and have some comprehension of the challenges associated with cancer treatment,” she said. “It is just something a child should not have to endure. If this money raised by shaving my head will help find a cure or reduce the trauma of treatment for one child, it is well worth it.”

She also said that shaving your head is a liberating experience.

“It easier for me since I was bald once due to chemo but it is liberating to not have think about what my hair looks like or deal with fixing it every day. Our spirit is what makes us who we are not our hair or physical features,” she said. “The SLC is hosting this event because we would like to give back and be a part of something life-changing. We would also like the community to know that we are involved and here to help in any way that we can,”Weiss said.

SLC hopes to raise $30,000 through this event — so far they have reached $5,000. They are also looking to recruit between 50 and 75 shavees and have so far enlisted 31.

Rave has raised $500 of that total so far and donated $50 of his own money. He said this event is an opportunity to connect with the Brookings and SDSU community to raise awareness of childhood cancer and funds for a cure. “I believe it is also important for the community to understand that the students at SDSU do serve a purpose and do enjoy giving back to community,” he said. Registration and check in will begin at 2:30 p.m. on April 27.

At this time, shavees will get the chance to sign up for a time to have their head shaven and t-shirts will be given to shavees who raise $50 or more. Walk-ins will be welcome with a $10 minimum donation required for a shave. The shaves will occur approximately every 10 minutes and photo-taking opportunities will be available. For more information, call 688-4143 or 1-888-899-BALD..

“I believe it is also important for the community to understand that the students at SDSU do serve a purpose and do enjoy giving back to community,” he said. Registration and check in will begin at 2:30 p.m. on April 27. At this time, shavees will get the chance to sign up for a time to have their head shaven and t-shirts will be given to shavees who raise $50 or more. Walk-ins will be welcome with a $10 minimum donation required for a shave. The shaves will occur approximately every 10 minutes and photo-taking opportunities will be available. For more information, call 688-4143 or 1-888-899-BALD.sed $500 of that total so far and donated $50 of his own money. He said this event is an opportunity to connect with the Brookings and SDSU community to raise awareness of childhood cancer and funds for a cure.

“I believe it is also important for the community to understand that the students at SDSU do serve a purpose and do enjoy giving back to community,” he said. Registration and check in will begin at 2:30 p.m. on April 27. At this time, shavees will get the chance to sign up for a time to have their head shaven and t-shirts will be given to shavees who raise $50 or more. Walk-ins will be welcome with a $10 minimum donation required for a shave. The shaves will occur approximately every 10 minutes and photo-taking opportunities will be available. For more information, call 688-4143 or 1-888-899-BALD.

“She has been like a mother to all students and alumni who have been in our fraternity and a huge asset to the experience and personal connections to all who interacted with her,” said Justin Krell, an AGR member and senior agronomy major from Blooming Prairie, Minn.

Helen feels the same way about “her boys,” and said they are like her extended family.

“I really enjoy cooking for the gentlemen here, it’s just like a family home,” she said. “I can honestly say this is the best job I’ve ever had.”

Helen looks like nothing if not a stereotypical grandmother-figure with a cloud of curly, graying hair surrounding her face and round glasses framing her kind eyes.

She arrives at the AGR house at 9 a.m. each weekday to begin preparing the buffet-line-style noon meal. Once that meal is finished and cleaned up, she leaves for a few hours in the afternoon and comes back at 4 p.m. to begin preparations for the evening meal every day, except Friday.

A couple of AGR students, the “prep team,” join her to help get everything ready for this meal. This is a responsibility that students cherish as a chance to talk to Helen.

Chris Opdahl, junior agronomy major from Slayton, Minn., has been a member of AGR for almost three years and currently serves as one of AGR’s co-stewards. As a co-steward, he is responsible for ensuring Helen has everything she needs to make meal preparation run smoothly each day, from planning the menu to ordering groceries.

“When you’re on prep you get to work alongside her. It makes it fun building that relationship,” Opdahl said.

Helen prepares enough food every day, twice a day, for up to 50 hungry young men who grew up on farms. Opdahl said AGR spends approximately $5,000 to $6,000 a week on food alone. Students can generally go through between 10 to 15 pounds of beef in one meal, depending on what’s on the menu. In the month of September, they consumed an entire steer.

“They don’t eat normal portions,” Helen said with a small laugh, her rosy cheeks wrinkling up into a good-natured smile. “More like one and a half.”

Other opportunities the AGR members have to interact with Helen are Tuesday nights, when they hold formal dinners. Several students come in to assist with the additional set up and during clean up after each of the twice-daily meals.

“That was the hardest thing for me to get used to, I’ve always had to do my own dishes at other jobs,” she said. “Here they come in and wash their own dishes and the pots and pans after meals.”

Opdahl and Krell said Helen cooks meals similar to what they enjoyed at home, adding that she “prepares the food with love, just like our mothers or families would when we were growing up.”

Their relationship with Helen isn’t bound to meal times. She provides a warm and welcoming atmosphere for the members of AGR and is always happy to talk with them about their lives.

“She really gets to know us and even our routines,” Opdahl said. “She knows when you’re sick and if you miss one of the meals you usually make, she’ll ask you where you were.”

As much as Helen worries about her boys and works to make sure everything is covered for them, lately they have had a reason to be concerned about her as well. She has been experiencing health problems with her heart.

“About a year and a half ago, she was in the hospital in Brookings. When we went to visit her and brought her flowers, she was just concerned about us and how we were,” Krell said. “Even through her sickness or whatever was going on, we were her boys and she’s always concerned about us.”

Her health issues are what ultimately led her to make the difficult decision to officially hand in her resignation.

“When I have to go in to the hospital, I feel like I’m leaving them without a cook,” Helen said. “It’s in their best interests to have someone here all the time.”

AGR is looking for someone to fill Helen’s position when she retires, but, as Opdahl said, “they are some pretty big shoes to fill.”

“Helen makes this a warm place to be, she makes it feel like home,” Krell said.

“She always greets you when you come and ask how your day is,” Opdahl said. “It’s going to definitely be a different atmosphere without her here. We will all miss her greatly.”

Helen finds it hard to imagine what she’ll do in retirement but plans to take it easy. She said she’ll keep busy baby sitting grandchildren and great-grandchildren, working as a volunteer in a nursing home and checking in on “her boys” every once in a while.

“I’ll probably be back to peek in and see what they’re doing,” she said.

The keynote speaker for the conference, Richard L. Fox, associate professor in the political science department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif., gave a presentation at 7 p.m. Monday night titled “Men Rule — the continued under-representation of women in U.S. politics.”

“There’s just something wrong about a country whose population is 51 percent women [and] has so few women in political office,” Fox said.

He said the large gap between the number of women and men in office is concerning because women have a unique perspective.

“Female legislators often focus on different policies, bringing attention to issues like women’s health and education for example and we’re missing out on that,” he said.

Fox first presented statistics demonstrating how severely women are under-represented in America. 17 percent of the representatives in the U.S. Congress are women and 12 percent of America’s governors are women. The ratio of men and women in state legislatures is slightly less disparate on average then at the national level, but not by much. This is a concern in South Dakota, where around 22 percent of state-level elected officials are women, as well as other states.

“Even though our only voice in congress is a woman, the percentage of women at the state level [in South Dakota] is low,” said Elizabeth Tolman, associate professor of communication studies and theater and one of the 10 SDSU professors that is a part of the Women’s Studies Program.

The presentation was based on a study that Fox and his partner and co-author, Jennifer Lawless, wrote about in their book, It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office.

The study was conducted through surveying and interviewing thousands of women to find out why they are less likely to consider running for a political office than men, even though a woman candidate is equally as likely as a male candidate to be elected — but only if they actually run.

The reasons for this difference are not the usual suspects — discrimination, difficulty of electoral process or not making it up the usual political candidate pipelines of business ownership or being a lawyer, educator or political activist.

“Women have as good of a chance as men to win an election, but they are much less inclined to run,” Fox said. “We decided to focus our study on finding out why.”

Fox and Lawless concluded, through their survey results, that women perceive the electoral environment in a less appealing light then men. They see it as more aggressive and competitive than men do and consider themselves less competitive, confident and qualified.

They also found women were less likely than men to receive the suggestion to run for an office from others. Libby Trammell, sophomore human development and family studies major and sole female candidate in the 2012 Students’ Association presidential election, said her decision to run was motivated by encouragement from her friends and family.

“I decided to run after Jared asked me to join him as his running mate and everyone I know told me [to] do it,” she said.

The survey showed women are also less likely to run because they are still responsible for the majority of childcare and household tasks. Many of the women Fox and Lawless surveyed said certain aspects of campaigning, such as reduced privacy and having less time with family, discouraged them from running for office.

“Women are still seen more as in-home, private, family-oriented citizens, while men are seen as out-of-home, public citizens,” said Fox. “We need to recruit women and spread awareness about women’s electoral success in order to close the gender gap between women and men in political offices in the future.”

This presentation on the difficulties women face in politics, and the two panel discussions held on the same topic earlier in the day, were intended to be a start to a conversation. SDSU organizations such as the Women’s Studies Program and the Campus Women’s Coalition hope the conference has brought the issue to the attention of more people at SDSU.

“We hope that the conference was a starting point for future discussions and that it highlighted this issue,” Tolman said.

This year’s pub crawl will look a little different than previous St. Patrick’s Day celebrations thanks to the efforts of the Downtown Core Events Committee.

The City of Brookings is paying $800 for Port-a-Potty rentals, the Park and Rec Department is providing additional garbage cans and Brookings City Police are putting in about $1,800 for more police protection.

Although there are new initiatives in place, there is also a recurring theme: behave. Police Chief Jeff Miller said a “zero tolerance policy” will be in effect for the celebration on March 17 and any pub-crawler caught with an open container or engaging in public urination will be cited.

Chris Stoltenberg, manager of Cubby’s Sports Bar & Grill and co-owner of the Nine Bar and Nightclub, said the additional police force is something that he and other bar owners always encourage.

“When you have that many people converged in one area, just like when you go to a concert or something like that, you always want to make sure everything runs well,” he said.

Nadine Streier, senior consumer affairs major from Eden, S.D., has mixed feelings about the DCEC’s new contributions.

“To me, it seems like when people are intoxicated they don’t care what they’re doing or whether there are more garbage cans,” she said. “More security will probably be helpful because there are always a lot of fights [during pub crawl].”

The additional amenities will not be limited to this year’s pub crawl, but will also be present during other popular annual events such as Hobo Days and SDSU graduation day. The DCEC, created on November 11, 2011, is facilitating these changes in response to complaints that certain downtown celebrations get out of hand.

“The DCEC organized last fall in response to some of the complaints about how the downtown area needs additional cleanup several times during the year,” said Downtown Brookings, Inc., Program Manager Vicki Schuster in a written statement. “Our mission is to address concerns prior to, during and after major events in the downtown core area, as well as year-round weekend cleanup. ”

The DCEC is comprised of SDSU students, downtown bar and business owners and city liaisons. Patty Kratochvil, owner of Threads of Memories in downtown Brookings said the DCEC’s measures will foster a better downtown experience for everyone on St. Patrick’s Day.

“We need to be friendly to people coming for the event to socialize and also to customers who come downtown for other reasons. This will help make sure everyone gets along,” she said.

Several main street programs in South Dakota towns of similar size to Brookings and a few other such towns in the U.S. were taken into account before developing a budget for the year.

Schuster said the total budget, covering three major events and every weekend cleanup, will be about $13,000. The Brookings City Police will hire extra officers for the three events at about $6,000 and port-a-potties and clean up will be about $3,500 each.

The DCEC is developing other ways to fund their activities. They are looking into using a 3B fund as well as a pool that bar and business owners will pay into on a monthly basis.

“Bar owners will obviously pay a little more due to the clean up effort and the fact that they benefit from this the most,” said Daniel Roberts, SDSU student and DCEC president.

The DCEC feels this is a reasonable budget that aligns with solutions from cities similar to Brookings.

“We will be in need of funds to cover these expenses which will benefit everyone,” said Schuster. “[It] will help make Brookings a welcoming place to visit and a clean place to stay.”

Student Association Vice President Anthony Sutton has helped devise a plan to create a document that will establish an efficient mode of communication between past, incoming and current SA leaders. The General Activity Fee (GAF) Strategy will outline the SA leaders’ intended plans for distributing the fund generated by the general activity fee that all students pay each semester.

“When you step into SA in general, there’s a pretty steep learning curve. This document will help student leaders worry a little less, give them some good background and good information in one place,” said Sutton, a senior political science and history major from Flandreau, S.D. Student Association Finance Chair Brian Gottlob says the new strategy will serve as a potential plan of action for the new leaders.

“New student leaders often don’t know what route to take, if we have an action plan they’ll know where to get started,” said Gottlob. “I’ve always heard that if you don’t have a goal, you don’t get anywhere. We’re trying to create a strategy that will make SDSU better for future students.”

The SA decides how best to use the GAF fund, portions of which are allocated to student organizations including clubs, athletics and intramurals as well as to major building projects such as an expansion of The Union or Wellness Center. Bigger projects such as expanding current buildings or erecting new ones cannot be completed in one term and often lose momentum as new SA leaders with their own agendas begin their term and old SA leaders are phased out.

“We have a list of projects; some things we think are realistic in the near future. It’s going to take the right people at the right time to complete them. With the strategy, we can identify [certain projects] as important for future student leaders to keep in mind,” Sutton said. “We can let them know we think this project is doable, important. When you have a plan you can always change it, but at least you’re talking about the same thing.”

VP of Student Affairs Marysz Rames has served as an advisor for the SA for approximately 10 years. She is excited about the strategy and the potential for long-term planning that it presents.

“New leaders will be able to build on the information that the previous leaders gathered. For example, they will be able to have a better understanding of student feedback collected on longer-term project [proposals],” Rames said. “My thought is that it would be shared with all students so they know what the SA leaders are thinking. I think this is really a move in the right direction.”

Increasing the transparency of the SA’s decision-making process concerning the GAF fund is another