Eyster: Inspiration at 20 leads to current job
Continued from page 1A
Schoonover, who has worked closely
with Eyster in his position as housing
director, characterized his leadership
style as “collaborative and participa
tory. ”
“He is always willing to listen to
new ideas and new thoughts,” she
said. “I appreciate his great listen
ing skills.”
Eyster’s skills as a mediator
should be useful in his new posi
tion. As vice president for student
affairs, Eyster is charged with over
seeing a variety of groups and or
ganizations, ranging from the Office
of Admissions to Physical Activity
and Recreation Services.
He plans to make the promotion
of diversity a focus of his new job.
“ (Diversity) is a campus-wide pri
ority and certainly within student
affairs,” Eyster said. “We have to
recognize that the world is getting
to be a smaller and smaller place.”
Although Eyster is new to student
government, ASUO President Adam
Walsh said that, so far, he is “taking
all the right steps.”
“He is really engaged into being a
good liaison between us and the ad
ministration,” Walsh said.
Eyster said he does not want to
be a “placeholder” in his new posi
tion as vice president of student af
fairs, but also added that he does
not want to assume the office on a
permanent basis. When a new vice
president is found, Eyster plans to
resume his duties as full-time hous
ing director, a role that he aspired to
when he was an undergraduate.
“I am a little bit unusual,” Eyster
said. “From the time I was probably
20,1 knew what I wanted to do as a
career field — I wanted to be a di
rector of housing.”
As a freshman at Nebraska,
Eyster was president of his floor.
The following year he was president
of his hall. After that he worked as
a Residence Assistant.
When he began college, Eyster
planned to pursue a career in teach
ing. After student teaching in an
eighth grade social studies class, he
changed his mind.
“It was totally devastating,”
Eyster said, noting that his students
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seemed disinterested in learning.
He realized he was better suited
to work as an educator outside the
classroom.
“There are lots of ways to teach,
and there are lots of ways to have
an impact on educational environ
ments and policy that affects stu
dents,” he said. “As I was getting
close to graduation, I realized that
what I had been doing as an RA was
educational.”
As director of housing, Eyster
works to integrate residence halls
into the learning experiences of
every resident.
Eyster has consistently supported
steps to make living and learning
complementary, Schoonover said.
“Mike has been an instrumental
part in our residential FIGS [Fresh
man Interest Groups],” she said. “I
would say between our academic
initiatives, our community develop
ment and hiring, that we have made
great strides in our residence halls. ”
Eyster said that the Living Learn
ing Center (LLC), which is sched
uled to open next fall, will further
the housing department’s goal of
creating learning experiences out
side of the classroom. The LLC is
the first step toward Eyster’s goal of
upgrading residence facilities.
“We need to renovate or replace
every one of our residence halls in
the central part of this campus,”
he said.
jbailey@ daily emerald, com
IN BRIEF
Vaccine manufacturers
prepare for bird flu
WASHINGTON — President Bush
summoned vaccine manufacturers to
a White House meeting Friday, hoping
to boost the industry amid increasing
fears of a worldwide outbreak of bird
flu. It's the latest in a flurry of prepara
tions for a possible pandemic.
Senior administration officials also
met with representatives from some 80
countries on Thursday night to com
pile an account of what is being done
globally to prevent a pandemic, and to
determine where exactly improve
ments are needed.
Health and Human Services Secre
tary Mike Leavitt told the foreign
health officials that preventing a pan
demic would require a network of
countries working together. And he
said though a pandemic may be avoid
ed this year, or next year, there eventu
ally will be one, as there was in 1918,
1957 and 1968.
“We need to be ready,” he said.
This month, vaccine maker Sanofi
Pasteur begins the first mass produc
tion of a new vaccine that promises to
protect against bird flu, producing $100
million worth of inoculations for a gov
ernment stockpile.
But it would take months to create a
new vaccine from scratch if a different
strain of bird flu than today’s, known
as H5N1, emerges. Even if the vaccine
works, Sanofi is producing enough to
protect anywhere from 2 million to 20
million people — depending on how
much must be put into each dose —
and it's not clear when or where simi
lar large stockpiles could be made.
The nation has only three main
manufacturers of vaccine against the
regular flu that circulates each winter.
Bush called together the heads of
major vaccine companies “to press
ahead to expand our manufacturing
capacity for a vaccine to address this
risk,” White House spokesman Scott
McClellan said Thursday.
On the agenda for Friday's meeting
is liability, McClellan said. If healthy
people suffer side effects from a vac
cine, manufacturers can face huge law
suits, one reason many companies
have left the business in the last two
decades.
Another reason is that vaccines
aren’t very profitable, especially flu
vaccine; it must be made fresh every
winter to keep up with new strains.
The irony: Although there have been
three shortages since 2000 and sup
plies are strained again this year, in
most years manufacturers throw away
millions of unused flu shots.
The Bush administration has been
criticized for not getting help fast
enough to devastated Gulf Coast states
after the storm.
Bush has pushed the focus now on
bird flu by suggesting Tliesday that the
military might be needed to enforce
mass quarantines.
In the flurry of activity, the Senate
last week passed legislation authoriz
ing $4 billion for additional purchases
of anti-flu medication. The vast major
ity is to buy Tamiflu, a pill to both treat
and possibly prevent bird flu but that
is in short supply. Leavitt has called for
a Tamiflu stockpile to treat 20 million
people, but the government has
enough for just 4.3 million so far.
—The Associated Press
Spending: Post-hurricane jobless claims increase
Continued from page 7 A
came despite increased costs for hur
ricane aid and rising monthly costs of
the war in Iraq. The Congressional
Research Service said in a separate
report Thursday the Bush administra
tion is now spending about $5.9 bil
lion a month on the war in Iraq, a 19
percent increase from a year ago.
Holtz-Eakin also said Hurricanes
Katrina and Rita were “unequivocally
bad for the U.S. economy” but that
“the economy will weather this.”
The impact on the economy was il
lustrated Thursday as the number of
hurricane-related jobless claims rose to
363,000 last week. More bad news is
expected with the release Friday of un
employment figures for September.
Congress is already conducting
hearings on whether the money ap
propriated so far is being spent wise
ly. Paulison said four federal con
tracts that were awarded with little or
no competition will be rebid in an ef
fort to save taxpayers’ money.
“I’ve been a public servant for a
long time, and I’ve never been a fan
of no-bid contracts,” Paulison told a
Senate panel investigating FEMA’s re
sponse to the hurricane. “Sometimes
you have to do them because of the
expediency of getting things done.
And I can assure that you we are go
ing to look at all of those contracts
very carefully.”
“All of those no-bid contracts, we
are going to go back and rebid,” he
said.
FEMA awarded no-bid contracts
of up to $100 million each for hous
ing and construction to four firms
—- Bechtel Corp., Fluor Corp., the
Shaw Group and CH2M Hill — it
had reviewed shortly before Katrina
slammed into the Gulf Coast. So far,
the four companies cost a combined
$132 million, FEMA officials said.
Separately, FEMA’s budget for the
2006 fiscal year that began Oct. 1
was passed Thursday by the House
on a 347-70 vote as part of a $31.9
billion measure funding the Home
land Security Department.
The House voted Thursday to
prohibit Medicare and Medicaid
coverage for erectile dysfunction
drugs such as Viagra in order to
cover health care costs and extend
ed unemployment benefits for Gulf
Coast hurricane victims.
The legislation, approved by voice
vote, provides $500 million in federal
unemployment funds to disaster
states, including $400 million to
Louisiana. It extends Medicaid and
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other health programs that assist low
income families nationwide. Bill
sponsors said cutting off coverage for
erectile dysfunction drugs would
save the government $600 million
over five years.
Three other Katrina-related bills
also were passed by the House.
One would waive some Section 8
housing rules to help more dis
placed hurricane victims get rent
vouchers and prohibit the Housing
and Urban Development Depart
ment from canceling contracts with
subsidized housing project dam
aged by the hurricane.
Two others would allow the Agri
culture Department to divert money
from rural public housing funding
to rental assistance for storm vic
tims and make it easier for commu
nity development block grants to be
used for storm-related reconstruc
tion.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary
John Snow said the Bush adminis
tration, while supporting tax incen
tives to rebuild the Gulf Coast econ
omy, will oppose any proposal to
have the federal government guar
antee state and local bonds.
“That would be a serious mis
take,” he said.
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