Anyway, we had fun with long exposures.

Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Washington for the National Equality March with rainbow flags and “boys need husbands too” signs held high. The procession stretched several miles, ending at the Capitol Building.

Molly Dunn, a gender and women’s studies junior, said she came to Washington as an observer rather than a participant. She said she is unsure about her sexuality and is attracted to people based on personality rather than gender.

“I think people really want to label everyone and put them in a certain category,” Dunn said. “I don’t want people to label me based on who I’m sleeping with.”

Her partner, Eli Gross, an arts administration junior and director of UK’s OUTsource program, said she was at the march to fight for equal rights.

Gross said she thinks marriage rights are not the biggest problem the LGBT community faces, but it is one of the largest barriers to public acceptance.

At the Capitol, protesters rallied, listened to various speeches and demanded equal rights for all citizens, regardless of sexual preference, from President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

After Obama’s speech Saturday evening about changing the ban on gays serving in the military, many protesters had mixed feelings about whether Obama addressed all equality issues.

D.C. resident Laura Wood and her partner Melissa Mahony felt the Defense of Marriage Act was adequately covered.

“Everyone was a little too excited after Obama’s speech,” Wood said. “He was great with the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, but he was not as enthusiastic about other gay rights.”

Wood said she has seen several protests and rallies come through Washington, but never one that had such a turnout.

“I had no idea there would be this many people here,” Wood said. “It’s really fantastic.”

Wood is engaged to Mahony. They plan to solidify their marriage within the next year, determined the laws with gay marriage will change.

No matter where they stood with their own sexualities, students with UK’s OUTsource program marched on the capitol for equality.

“I’m here not only for myself and my future, but I’m here fighting for my gay uncle, for my lesbian cousin, for every kid who has been picked on in school for being different,” said Michael Canales, a student at Elizabethtown (Ky.) Community College. “I’m here marching to make sure everyone is protected.”

Students learn about dorm fires from demonstration

Story and photos by Adam Wolffbrandt

In the event of a fire, students living in residence halls have less than three minutes to escape before it is too late.

For Campus Fire Safety Month, the UK Fire Marshal’s Office, with the help of the Lexington Fire Department, built two model dorm rooms to demonstrate to students how quickly flames can engulf a room. Both rooms contained typical dorm items, including snack food boxes, clothes and posters.

The first room demonstration did not include a sprinkler system. The time of ignition to the time of flashover was clocked at two minutes and thirty seconds.

A flashover is when the flames engulf everything in the room, UK Fire Marshal Greg Williamson said.

In the room with the sprinkler system, the sprinkler activated in about 40 seconds. Both rooms had smoke detectors, which triggered in about 15 seconds.

Carrie Bowling, a member of the Lexington Fire Department and Fire Prevention Community Services, said that most students have no idea how dangerous fires really are.

“In our position, we get to see how quickly a fire can spread and how devastating it can be, where you would never see that. That’s why we wanted to do this (demonstration) for the students,” Bowling said.

“My RA told me that everybody from (floor) eight and above is dead,” Evan Barnett, a pre-pharmacy freshman and resident of Blanding Tower, said of fire safety plans. “We are on 12, so (my RA) said that we don’t have much of a chance.”

Unattended cooking equipment, candles and extension chords cause the most fires, Williamson said.

Williamson said the UK fire safety policy includes items that are prohibited because fires have started at some point due to every item.

Many college fire fatalities are related to alcohol intoxication, Bowling said.

“If you are not alert enough to pay attention to the fire detector, that’s a huge problem,” she said.
Williamson said fires are unpredictable.

“With fire, you never know. It does what it wants to, when it wants to do it,” he said. “It’s a living, breathing animal.”

For more fire prevention policies, schedules and safety guides, go to the UK fire marshal’s Web site,  (http://ehs.uky.edu/fire).

I feel like this was a little incomplete, but it did get me past the fear of writing for the paper. Also, I haven’t figured out how to add the video to my blog, so if you go to http://www.kykernel.com go to Multimedia > Video to watch it! I taught Katie Perkowski how to do video for this, so she did most the work.

This was a really fun experience. Team McWolff (B-Mac and I) decided to wake up at 4 a.m. to go shoot the UK ROTC do their underwater training at the Aquatic Center. I was in there with the cadets, holding my breath for about a minute at a time while shooting, plus taking some above water.

Meet my twin brother, Eric. He’s my age. By day, he is man. By night, he is horse.

The second one is not actually my brother, but I shot them the same and thought it was funny.