By Katie Guyot
In preschool, children are taught the basic properties of the color wheel: blue plus yellow equals green, yellow plus red equals orange, and red plus blue equals purple.
But in Kansas, mixing the Jayhawks’ crimson and blue will never produce the Wildcats’ royal purple.
“Purple’s really ugly,” Free State junior Emily VanSchmus joked as she glanced around the K-State Student Union. “It’s basically like someone ate a Bomb Pop and threw up everywhere.”
VanSchmus is one of many University of Kansas fans attending the Flint Hills Publications Workshop in Manhattan -- enemy territory. Since KU and K-State are two of the few Division I schools in the state of Kansas, the Jayhawk-Wildcat rivalry sometimes involves serious antagonism. And beaks. And claws.
VanSchmus’s apprehension in the sea of purple stems from her lifelong residency in Lawrence, where Jayhawks are more common than jaywalkers.
“If I saw a K-State fan in the middle of the road, I might slow down a bit,” VanSchmus said, explaining that she would be more opposed to hitting a K-State fan than she would, say, a University of Missouri fan.
“No, I’d speed up,” said her friend Teanna Totten, junior at Free State High School.
But outnumbered KU fans aren’t the only ones to sense the tension straining the workshop’s muscles. Salina resident Shelby Dinkle, a high school senior who has flaunted her “purple pride” since first grade, said, “It starts out fun, but when it comes down to it, we all want our school to win.”
Dinkle recalls seeing a girl sporting a KU T-shirt on the first day of the Flint Hills Publications Workshop. It was not long before a student assistant tossed the rebel a replacement K-State shirt and commanded, “Don’t ever wear that KU shirt again.”
That evening, during the opening session, student assistants led a roomful of aspiring journalists in performing a traditional K-State dance. The dance requires a line of energized fans to alternately bend forward and backward at the waist to the beat of the “Wabash Cannonball,” the school’s unofficial second fight song. (Read more about the “Wabash Cannonball” at http://www.k-state.edu/band/history.html.)
The dancers at the front asked motionless KU fans if participating would make them melt. After all, they’re more used to waving the wheat.
Jeff Browne, who teaches at KU and instructs the workshop’s course on newspaper writing and design, went further than to dance the “Wabash.” Upon exiting Lawrence, he switched his Jayhawk hat for a Wildcat cap -- and on Tuesday, he bought a solid purple K-State sweatshirt.
“I try to embrace all Kansas schools,” said Browne, who has taught at KU since 2009.
Browne abandoned his KU hat on the dashboard of his car, and he drove to Manhattan with a royal purple crown. He showed no further favoritism toward either school until the tundra-like atmosphere of Union Room 213 forced him to hunt for something to ward off the cold.
He visited a plethora of fruitless stores before finding the perfect solution: an $8 sweatshirt from Varney’s with “K-State Football” written boldly across the chest.
When Lawrencians like Browne return home with purple K-State memorabilia crowding their suitcases, perhaps it will be the Jayhawks’ turn to defend their crimson and blue turf.
In preschool, children are taught the basic properties of the color wheel: blue plus yellow equals green, yellow plus red equals orange, and red plus blue equals purple.
But in Kansas, mixing the Jayhawks’ crimson and blue will never produce the Wildcats’ royal purple.
“Purple’s really ugly,” Free State junior Emily VanSchmus joked as she glanced around the K-State Student Union. “It’s basically like someone ate a Bomb Pop and threw up everywhere.”
VanSchmus is one of many University of Kansas fans attending the Flint Hills Publications Workshop in Manhattan -- enemy territory. Since KU and K-State are two of the few Division I schools in the state of Kansas, the Jayhawk-Wildcat rivalry sometimes involves serious antagonism. And beaks. And claws.
VanSchmus’s apprehension in the sea of purple stems from her lifelong residency in Lawrence, where Jayhawks are more common than jaywalkers.
“If I saw a K-State fan in the middle of the road, I might slow down a bit,” VanSchmus said, explaining that she would be more opposed to hitting a K-State fan than she would, say, a University of Missouri fan.
“No, I’d speed up,” said her friend Teanna Totten, junior at Free State High School.
But outnumbered KU fans aren’t the only ones to sense the tension straining the workshop’s muscles. Salina resident Shelby Dinkle, a high school senior who has flaunted her “purple pride” since first grade, said, “It starts out fun, but when it comes down to it, we all want our school to win.”
Dinkle recalls seeing a girl sporting a KU T-shirt on the first day of the Flint Hills Publications Workshop. It was not long before a student assistant tossed the rebel a replacement K-State shirt and commanded, “Don’t ever wear that KU shirt again.”
That evening, during the opening session, student assistants led a roomful of aspiring journalists in performing a traditional K-State dance. The dance requires a line of energized fans to alternately bend forward and backward at the waist to the beat of the “Wabash Cannonball,” the school’s unofficial second fight song. (Read more about the “Wabash Cannonball” at http://www.k-state.edu/band/history.html.)
The dancers at the front asked motionless KU fans if participating would make them melt. After all, they’re more used to waving the wheat.
Jeff Browne, who teaches at KU and instructs the workshop’s course on newspaper writing and design, went further than to dance the “Wabash.” Upon exiting Lawrence, he switched his Jayhawk hat for a Wildcat cap -- and on Tuesday, he bought a solid purple K-State sweatshirt.
“I try to embrace all Kansas schools,” said Browne, who has taught at KU since 2009.
Browne abandoned his KU hat on the dashboard of his car, and he drove to Manhattan with a royal purple crown. He showed no further favoritism toward either school until the tundra-like atmosphere of Union Room 213 forced him to hunt for something to ward off the cold.
He visited a plethora of fruitless stores before finding the perfect solution: an $8 sweatshirt from Varney’s with “K-State Football” written boldly across the chest.
When Lawrencians like Browne return home with purple K-State memorabilia crowding their suitcases, perhaps it will be the Jayhawks’ turn to defend their crimson and blue turf.
Katie Guyot is a junior at Free State High School and a student in the advanced writing class.
No comments:
Post a Comment