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

• I spoke with Libby Johnson, KU’s student body president (and a proud Lawrencian, too), earlier this week.

She and a gaggle of just under 20 KU students visited Topeka this week to meet with legislators on various topics.

The day is organized by the Kansas Board of Regents, and the students, as they typically do, advocated for more state support of higher education.

But I wanted to catch up with her on one issue in particular, and that was the proposal that would allow concealed carry on university campuses.

As keen readers of the Lawrence Journal-World already know, that proposal was approved in committee this week.

Johnson said that while the group had “a variety of opinions,” we can count her as “very against it.”

The student body presidents of Fort Hays State and Kansas State also testified against the bill, she told me.

• I mentioned in yesterday’s post about an upcoming Hall Center lecture on evolution that Kansas obviously has a history of anti-evolution movements.

But a sweet tipster pointed me to a tale that shows how the topic of evolution goes all the way back to the beginnings of KU history.

According to kuhistory.com, KU’s fifth chancellor, Francis Huntington Snow, did something of an about-face on the issue, abandoning what he was taught growing up for a belief system that incorporated both evolution and Christianity.

It’s an interesting story, and you can read all about it at the link above.

• And, as long as I’m bringing you breaking news from the 19th century, I may as well travel a few decades into the future and at least get you into the 20th century.

I enjoyed this article as well, about two men named John B. McClendon and their connections to KU. It’s worth a read, and I’ll summarize just a snippet below.

John McClendon Jr. was about to become the first black physical education student at KU in 1933, according to the article. But first he had a chat with a rather intimidating figure who was head of the physical education department, who happened to be called James Naismith, who just happened to invent a sport that’s pretty popular around here these days.

His father suggested that he go up and do what everyone else did and try not to get hurt. If he did get hurt, dear old dad wouldn’t be far away with his .44.

“Come on in, fathers are always right,” Naismith told him.

• You don’t need to wave a .44 around to get me to take your tips for Heard on the Hill. Just send me an email at ahyland@ljworld.com.