Latest news with #UniversityofWyoming
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sorority sisters given 30 days to amend complaint, or have case dismissed permanently
CHEYENNE — A group of sorority sisters at the University of Wyoming have 30 days to file a second amended complaint in their appealed lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma, after U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson approved the motion made by KKG representatives on Friday. It's been nearly a year since the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal lawsuit by the six KKG sorority sisters, and Judge Carolyn B. McHugh found the case was not appealable without a final order from Johnson. In August 2023, Johnson dismissed the sorority sisters' lawsuit against KKG without prejudice for admitting a transgender member into the University of Wyoming chapter, giving the plaintiffs an option to amend their complaint. Last June, McHugh gave the plaintiffs two options: stand on their existing complaint and seek a final decision from the Wyoming judge, or amend their complaint and continue their case at the federal district court level. However, the sorority sisters have yet to make a decision. In January 2024, another lawsuit was filed against KKG by sorority alumnae Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. However, the Ohio federal judge moved to transfer the case to Wyoming under the 'first-to-file' rule. U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson wrote his court lacked jurisdiction to oversee the case because a duplicative lawsuit was already filed in Wyoming federal court. Levang and Tuck-Smith filed a petition for writ of mandamus to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, asking if it was proper for the Ohio court to transfer the case to Wyoming. This decision has not been released yet. KKG questioned if the sorority sisters were 'strategically delaying' the lawsuit in their motion filed in February. The motion asked Johnson to set a deadline for the sorority sisters to amend their complaint or have the case dismissed entirely. On Friday, Johnson sided with the appellants and gave the sorority sisters 30 days to submit their second complaint. 'Let us be the first to acknowledge that this case has ended up in a rather confusing procedural Neverland,' Johnson wrote. The plaintiffs' failure to make a move on either of McHugh's suggested options put the case 'in a Peter Pan-esque state of immaturity, preventing any court from adjudicating on the merits,' Johnson added. If an amended complaint is not submitted by the deadline, then it will be dismissed permanently, according to court documents.
Boston Globe
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Voice of lay Catholics is likely to be heard in Leo XIV's church
'Every voice had equal value,' said Susan Pascoe, the business consultant, who is chair of Catholic Emergency Relief Australia. She sat at a table with the future pope for the meetings, which often stretched to 11 hours or more a day during four weeks in Rome. Advertisement Pope Francis dropped by to listen in, leading another meeting attendee, Wyatt Olivas, a college student from Wyoming, to refer to the pontiff as his 'bestie in Christ.' When Leo stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica on Thursday and gave his first address as pontiff, he indicated that he would continue this practice of listening closely to many voices. He called for a 'synodal church,' referencing the process of dialogue between church leaders and lay people that was one of Francis' signature legacies. Francis, in seeking to democratize the church, opened summits of bishops to lay people, including women, who in 2023 were permitted to vote for the first time about what issues the church should address. Advertisement Francis did not want church policies to be decided only by bishops in closed rooms. He wanted to open the doors to all Catholics. That the new pope decided to mention the concept at all in his first address was significant, said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit writer and well-known proponent of outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics. Inviting lay people to sit as equals with bishops was one of Francis' contentious moves. 'So a cardinal archbishop from an ancient diocese had to listen to a 20-year-old college student from Philadelphia, and that is quite threatening to some people,' Martin said. 'It's really important that Pope Leo has embraced that.' Olivas, a 21-year-old Sunday school teacher and junior at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was first invited to a meeting in Rome in 2023, when he was 19. At first, he said, he wondered if any of the church leaders, particularly the high-ranking cardinals, would take him seriously. But as the meetings began, with strict rules of engagement requiring everyone to listen while others spoke, the appearance of hierarchy broke down. 'These cardinals who typically sit on their thrones,' Olivas said, 'for them to sit equally with a 19-year-old and listen to me' made him feel like 'we're all in this together.' At the meetings during Francis' papacy, some divisive topics came up, including the ordination of women as Catholic deacons, the requirement of celibacy for priests and the church's attitude toward same-sex couples. Francis requested that various study groups examine some of the more difficult issues and compile reports, in effect postponing decisions about whether to change church teachings or church law. Advertisement Progressives who had high hopes that these listening sessions might lead to tangible shifts in church policy worry that the new pope will continue along a path of 'a lot of talk and very little action,' said Miriam Duignan, executive director of the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research. Some conservatives say progressives hijacked the meetings as a way to push their liberal agenda. 'Synodality for some people is an ideology,' said Gerhard Ludwig Müller, a conservative cardinal from Germany. Supporters of the process say that simply bringing lay people into discussions with church leaders enhances a transparency that the church has previously lacked. 'If you look at a country like Australia, which had a five-year inquiry into sexual abuse, the notion of a culture of clericalism was part of the analysis of what needed to be addressed,' Pascoe said. For too long, she said, the church was organized around a structure where 'all authority was vested in one individual of the priest or bishop.' By forcing church leaders to talk seriously with lay people, she said, the consultations inaugurated by Francis tried to introduce a 'responsible approach to living and being in the church.' For Leo, who worked as a missionary and parish priest in Peru, listening to and living among lay people has long been a key tenet of his leadership style. In Peru, he served as bishop of a rural diocese and was 'living with them, not in a palace but in a simple house,' said the Rev. Gilles Routhier, a professor of theology at Laval University in Quebec and an adviser to the Vatican meetings convened by Francis. Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda, Cameroon, who also sat at the same table as the future Pope Leo during the meetings in 2024, said the man who is now pontiff took the sessions very seriously even though he occasionally had to dash out to deal with his day job running the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops globally. Advertisement 'You could see he appreciated the contribution of everyone, and he also came across as a very good listener,' Nkea Fuanya said. In a conversation recorded last year at a church in Illinois, when he was still a cardinal, the man who is now Pope Leo explained how Francis was 'looking for a way to help people understand that the church is not Father up here on Sunday with a lot of spectators.' He added, 'It does not take away at all the authority, if you will, or the ministry of those who are called to specific services in the church, such as a bishop or a priest. But it does call the best gifts out of each and every one to bring them together.' It is not yet clear whether Leo will encourage the consultative groups to continue talking about the most sensitive issues facing the church. But those who have participated in the process say it would be hard for him to completely squash those discussions. Martin said that those who had specific pet issues needed to understand that the process was more about 'changing the methods by which we would be able to move ahead with some of these issues.' He added that some of the most commonly raised topics by certain Catholics did not necessarily resonate with the faithful the world over. Advertisement 'We also heard from people who were much more concerned about migrants and refugees, about poverty, about living in countries where Catholics are minorities' than about ordaining women or supporting the desires of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion, Martin said. 'Those are a certain constellation of concerns,' he added. The new pope, he said, 'really has to take a much more universal view of the church.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Private Land Is Being Developed in the West. National Park Tourists Would Pay to Help Stop It
Millions of people flock to Western national parks every year for the chance to see elk, deer, pronghorn, grizzly bears, wolves, and more. Visitors bring their families and spend their money in neighboring communities. And like those seasonal visitors, most of the wildlife that summers in high-profile parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton don't stay year-round, either. They migrate outside park boundaries to escape deep snow and harsh winters. Those migrations have worked for millennia, even as settlers brought cows and sheep and staked their claims. But as it becomes harder to make a living off livestock, private ranches — the ones that harbor the wildlife that interests both hunters and tourists — continue to be subdivided and developed. To prevent all this slicing and dicing, a former Wyoming lawmaker and rancher had an idea: Would millions of NPS visitors be willing to pay a little extra to help support the land that supports the wildlife they travel to see? University of Wyoming researchers asked just that question last summer, and discovered that of nearly 1,000 people surveyed, 75 percent said they would pay an increased tax on park concessions and other goods that would go to conservation outside the park. And 66 percent agreed to a hypothetical added fee at the entrance gate. Many national park visitors say they'd pay extra fees to help conserve the wildlife they travel to watch. Photo by NPS 'The support for funding wildlife conservation is a testament to how important wildlife are to park visitors,' says Hilary Byerly Flint, a UW research scientist and lead author on the paper published Monday in the journal Conservation Science and Practice. In fact, about 77 percent of those surveyed said they traveled to the parks primarily to see wildlife. If that wildlife declined, half of respondents said, so would their visits. Conserve Private Habitat to Boost Public Wildlife The national park system was created, in part, to protect wildlife habitat across the country and preserve unique wild spaces for public enjoyment. But research has shown that these sorts of wildlife islands aren't sufficient to maintain robust populations. One seminal study published almost 40 years ago in the journal Nature showed more species went extinct in 14 Western parks than the species that naturally reestablished there. In other words: Just because Yellowstone seems big doesn't mean it contains enough land and resources to house abundant wildlife within its borders forever. Animals like elk, deer and pronghorn need to move to access the best food and escape snow, says Arthur Middleton, a longtime big game and large carnivore researcher and professor at University of California, Berkeley. But while the West still contains abundant public land (Wyoming is about 50 percent public) those private and tribal land corridors are crucial to herds. 'The big picture for me is there needs to be a serious influx of resources to pay for habitat conservation,' he says. Albert Sommers, the rancher who first proposed this idea, agrees. 'These ranches of the West, they really hold together the landscape and the wildlife,' he says. 'Because most of what we control is the riparian areas, and it doesn't matter if you have 100,000 acres of open area around it if you can't move animals through.' He's watched for decades as neighbors sell and subdivide their ranches. One ranch to the south of him just built a golf course in prime moose habitat. The money could go to help landowners offset costs to build fence around hay fields or keep elk away from cattle to prevent the spread of diseases like brucellosis. It could also go toward wildlife over and underpasses and to pay ranchers for easements to keep land intact for generations to come. 'It's not like we're losing people in the West,' he says. 'Pressure to sell and subdivide are only increasing.' And parks may well be contributing to that pressure, says Middleton. Places like Yellowstone and Grand Teton draw millions of people that drive on rural highways. But they're also a draw for people looking for second or even third homes in pristine natural areas. In fact, a 2008 study showed that development around the globe increases near protected areas like parks. And more development means less wildlife habitat. 'Everywhere needs conservation funding,' Middleton says. 'But parks create their own weather pattern.' Read Next: How Seriously Should We Take the Sale of Federal Lands? Very Seriously, Experts Say The research didn't focus yet on the logistics, but Middleton says park supervisors have talked about the need for more revenue from visitors. The study also stressed the importance of not increasing fees to the point where visiting becomes unattainable for low-income families. Funneling money from park visitors wouldn't be a silver bullet to the West's wildlife struggles, Middleton cautions. But as working lands face drought and harsh winters, volatile market prices and uncertain futures, asking park visitors to help pay for land and wildlife conservation is a start.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Leaders work on rules to allow firearms in state facilities
CHEYENNE — Officials are getting closer to approving streamlined rules allowing members of the public to carry concealed firearms in state-owned public buildings by a July 1 deadline. In late February, after nearly a decade of trying to pass legislation to repeal the state's gun-free zones, lawmakers passed Enrolled Act 24, 'Wyoming Repeal Gun Free Zones Act.' The new law, which will go into effect this summer, repeals gun-free zones at public schools, community colleges, the University of Wyoming and state-owned government buildings. Gov. Mark Gordon let the new law go into effect without his signature, calling it a 'legislative power grab.' The State Building Commission must promulgate rules around firearms in public buildings to match state statute, and in early April, had a wide-ranging discussion on amending rules that covered not only firearms, but also public demonstrations at the Capitol. On Thursday, leaders shifted to a more targeted approach. 'Our direction was simply to reflect as simply as possible the legislation that passed' repealing Wyoming's gun-free zones, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder told her colleagues on the SBC of the latest rule draft. 'There is nothing in the rules that covers those other things discussed, as pertaining to surety bonds or public gatherings,' Degenfelder said. 'We simply looked at how we include the codified language into our rules.' The commission, which includes Degenfelder, Gordon, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, State Auditor Kristi Racines and State Treasurer Curt Meier, must pass rules to govern firearm carry provisions in the public spaces, implementing the new state law, before the new state statutes become effective July 1. 'I think (the rules) do an excellent job following the enrolled act,' Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, told the commission Thursday via Zoom. In January, the executive branch adopted similar amended rules that applied only to the Capitol and the Capitol Complex in Cheyenne. The new rules will apply to all buildings owned by the state of Wyoming. 'These rules will apply much more broadly,' Racines said Thursday. The rules will not apply to facilities exempted under statute, or buildings the state leases under general services' leasing authority. It also excludes spaces in publicly owned buildings that are subject to a lease to a private party. Rules must be in place by July, and while the board discussed embarking on an emergency rulemaking process to meet that timeline, only Gray advocated for an expedited process. Instead, the commission voted to start the regular rulemaking with an additional meeting planned for June, if necessary, to meet the July deadline. 'Today, I do not believe we meet the threshold to pass emergency rules,' Racines said. Gray referenced what he called a 'fear of firearms' in 'letters from the Governor's office' and said that he would prefer to start the emergency rulemaking process immediately. 'I am a little bit concerned, because we do have a bill that is going into effect as the law of the land on July 1,' Gray said. 'I think it would be better to start this process now.' Gordon responded that, 'From my standpoint, we have carry here (in the Capitol), and it is great we are going to expand that.' 'I want to assure people there is no attempt to try to roll back or walk away from what we have here,' Gordon said. Leases and insurance rates Leaders discussed how to handle facilities that are privately owned, but leased by state agencies, and whether the new rules should stipulate that lease negotiations prioritize carrying of firearms. 'When you have a lease, what is (the Wyoming Department of Administration and Information) going to do to try and negotiate carry into the buildings?' Gray asked. 'I think that A&I should be asked as a default, as a first method, to try to negotiate that.' Racines responded that lease negotiations could be handled under A&I leasing rules, rather than proposed SBC rule changes. Acknowledging private property rights, the commissioners discussed the possibility that building owners who enter into state leases may not want to allow firearms into their facilities, because such a practice could mean rising insurance costs. Gray argued the new law will actually make those facilities safer. 'Removing these gun-free zones and allowing for carry protects these areas,' he said. 'I still see a lot of (people) struggling with this concept, but it should lower our liability. 'This increases safety, and while it might not fit this CNN-style worldview that schools across our country have tried to build, the research shows that this increases safety,' Gray said. 'If it did increase insurance rates, I think that is something A&I would need to move forward to the insurance commissioner because I think it would be consistent with predatory behavior.'
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Yahoo
Search for Missing Mountain Biker Continues in Wyoming
The search is ongoing for Wyoming mountain biker Nash Quinn, who disappeared after leaving his home for a mountain bike ride last year. The Laramie Police Department is asking the public to be on the lookout for any trace of Quinn, who took his white, fixed-fork 29er Ridley out for a ride on Monday, July 8. 'Spring is right around the corner and everyone is itching to get outside in the sunshine,' the LPD wrote on its Facebook page. 'In your travels, please keep in mind that Nash Quinn is still missing. He liked to bike ride in the Pole Mountain, Happy Jack, Roger's Canyon and Sheep Mountain areas. If anything is found, please contact Police Dispatch at (307) 721-2526. Thank you.' Quinn, who was 39 when he went missing, enjoyed riding the mentioned trail systems southeast of Laramie roughly along US 80. Extensive searches by local authorities and search and rescue organizations have turned up no clues to Quinn's whereabouts. With snow receding and more activity on the trails, authorities are hoping signs of Quinn will be found. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Quinn is white with sandy hair, blue eyes, 5'10' and 165 lbs. He left his residence for a mountain bike ride with his rigid steel Ridley with a brown seat, which is missing from his residence along with his helmet and presumed to be with Quinn. His wallet, drivers license, cell phone and credit cards were left in his secured residence. His red 2003 Toyota Corolla Matrix was also left secured at his residence, suggesting Quinn left his home on his bike. '...His disappearance is highly unusal for him,' the NamUs file says. "...Nash was a fit, avid, experienced bicycle rider who frequently mountain biked 20 or more miles a day, sometimes 50 miles." While it's reported that he enjoyed riding in the mentioned Pole Mountain, Happy Jack, Roger's Canyon and Sheep Mountain systems, his intended destination is not known for certain. This area comprises some 70,000 acres, but the trail system is well-defined. Quinn was a visiting professor of Visual Arts teaching jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of Wyoming in Laramie at the time of his disappearance. According to the AndersonRanch arts center in Snowmass Village, Colorado, "Nash Quinn is a metalsmith who specializes in pattern-formed enameled vessels and small-scale spring-based mechanisms. He earned his BFA from the University of Wyoming, and his MFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He has taught, lectured, and exhibited his work nationwide. He currently lives in Laramie, WY where he teaches jewelry and metalsmithing at the University of Wyoming." His website is His work can be seen on his Instagram page. View the to see embedded media. Quinn's sister, Tess, has set up a GoFundMe page to help finance the cost of search efforts here. "Nash is a kind-hearted loving human being who brings light into everyone's life he touches and all of his family and friends are desperate to find him," she says. "He loves to ride his bike in the Pilot Hill area, Roger's Canyon, and up the summit to Happy Jack area surrounding Laramie Wyoming. ...Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the support during this critical time." Hikers and bikers recreating in the Laramie are are asked to be on the look out for any material that seems out of place along its trails and surrounding areas. If something is found (clothing, shoes, bike parts, etc.), leave it but take a photo, mark the location using your cell phone's GPS, and notify Laramie Police Department dispatch at (307) 721-2526. "Nash was a kind person who was good at virtually everything he set out to do," his friend, Jon Cicarelli, told Bike Magazine. "He was a very accomplished metalsmith, artist and teacher. He was also one hell of a cyclist who loved both urban and mountain biking. Last summer we had many in the cycling world and beyond come out to help find him. While we ultimately didn't find him, it was heartening to see all of the support from friends and total strangers. We are not done searching and we hope that eventually we will get answers."
