Heard on the Hill: Video shows KU foxes; GSP Hall going co-ed just part of an ongoing trend; Clery Act provides good resource for campus crime

Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• As referenced in the Heard on the Hill comments a few days ago, one tipster had secured some photos of foxes on campus near the Watkins Home, the former home of the Hall Center for the Humanities.

As it turns out, the commenter didn’t just have photos, but also a short video she took a couple of years ago. She said she also saw tracks in the snow in the area, so she assumed the foxes were still around.

Foxes on campus are nothing new. In fact, I’d challenge you to find a cuter baby fox photo than the one a University Daily Kansan photographer snapped while I was still working there as an editor back in 2005.

• With word this week that GSP Hall will be renovated — and shifted to co-educational living — Corbin Hall will be the lone residence hall still segregated by gender on campus. (It’s available for women only.)

Scholarship halls still offer unisex living, but that’s not something for everyone. They have chores, have to maintain a certain GPA and many have a certain kind of quirky culture that is really great for some but seems to turn some people off.

In many ways, I think that segregated dormitory living is quickly becoming a thing of the past — I know KU housing officials have told me that requests are going down.

When I first wrote about GSP becoming co-ed more than a year ago, I interviewed a student living there about the issue.

Kelsey Connolly, who was then a freshman from Stilwell, said she’d do it differently this time around so she could meet more people.

“It’s mainly all sorority girls (living in GSP), so you’re kind of stuck in that environment,” she told me at the time.

The most-requested rooms? Single-person rooms with private baths. There are just a smattering of those across campus, and they go pretty quickly.

• With all this hazing stuff going on, I’ve been doing some poking around with the Clery Act, which requires universities to submit campus crime data each year.

Here’s the place where you can find all that data in one place. And here are KU’s figures.

While issues exist with under-reporting — particularly of sexual assaults — this is a good resource for anyone looking to know more about campus crime.

• Cool tipsters know — you don’t always have to tell me something I didn’t already know. Sometimes showing me with pictures and videos are spiffier means of doing it. Send tips in whatever form you’ve got them to ahyland@ljworld.com.