University of Wisconsin
students protest Illinois’ mascot
Reaching the Sweet 16 wasn’t just an opportunity for the Illinois men’s basketball team.
“We knew when they won in the tournament, we had a chance to protest their mascot,” said Ned Blackhawk, assistant professor of Native American History at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “When we knew they were coming here, we started getting things together.”
Blackhawk and 40 other students involved in local American Indian activist groups took advantage of Illinois’ basketball success to protest that university’s controversial Chief Illiniwek before Illinois’ Midwest Regional Semifinal game against Kansas on March 22.
The mascot controversy hits closer to home on the Madison campus than the other Big Ten schools. Resolution 10-73 — passed by Wisconsin in 1993 — bans athletic teams with Indian mascots from playing Wisconsin in athletic events.
Illinois falls into a special clause of the resolution, which allows in-conference teams with Indian mascots to breach the rule.
“The sentiments against racist mascots are getting stronger and stronger here,” said Amy Mundloch of Blackearth, Wis., one of those protesting on Friday. “Slowly we’re starting to gain more support.”
— (U-WIRE) Daily Illinois
Study finds pesticide harms frogs’ sexual development
The most popular weedkiller in the United States can disrupt the sexual development of frogs, even at extremely low levels such as those found in rainfall, University of California-Berkeley researchers reported Monday.
When frogs were raised in water tainted with atrazine, as many as one in five developed multiple ovaries or testes or became hermaphrodites, with male and female organs in the same animal, the team said.
The testosterone levels of male frogs plunged and their voice boxes shrank — important because it could impair their ability to call mates.
These effects showed up at levels 30 times lower than those considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley, who specializes in the study of hormones during development.
Researchers said the new study could help explain why the world’s frogs are in a sharp and puzzling decline. Worldwide, 58 amphibian species have gone extinct over the past three decades or have not been seen in years. Another 91 are considered critically endangered and at risk of extinction.
“We really do see amphibians as biodiversity bellweathers,” said biologist David Wake of the University of California-Berkeley, who was not involved in the current study. “They’ve been around for 300 million years. They’re tough, and yet they’re checking out all around us.”
The new report, in Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes at a time when the EPA is reassessing the safety of atrazine. The weedkiller has been used for four decades in 80 countries and may be the most popular herbicide in the world; more than 60 million tons were applied last year in the United States, mostly to corn and sorghum crops.
The EPA now allows up to 3 parts per billion of atrazine in drinking water and is considering new standards that would allow wildlife to be exposed to up to 12 parts per billion. The Berkeley group found sexual development was affected at levels as low as .1 part per billion.
Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., said she thought the Berkeley study would have “a huge impact” on the process of setting standards. “It’s good work, scientifically sound work, repeatable work,” she said. “The experiments were done under rigorous scientific conditions, and the effects are dramatic.”
— (KRT)
