Local

Courtney Nelson has a passion for clothing, and she is willing to steam dresses for eight hours just to get hands-on experience.

Nelson, a senior at Stephens College from Keystone, Colo., has spent the past six months helping organize Stephens’ fashion department exhibit, “For Better, For Worse: The Dress, The Woman, The Life.”

Carol Spratt still trick-or-treats — even at age 40. Her secret: take a child along.

Spratt was an aunt at the age of 10, and there was always a child who needed her to take them out on Halloween.

Rep. Chuck Graham is challenging what he calls a loophole in a state amusement park statute that doesn’t require all climbing walls to be subject to inspections or to have safety cables.

Graham announced Wednesday that he intends to file legislation on Dec. 1 that would add climbing walls to the list of rides requiring inspection under Missouri’s amusement park statute. The current law only requires rides with mechanical devices to be inspected.

A letter concerning the free exchange of ideas and appropriate student response to controversy was sent this week to about 5,700 students who live in MU’s residence halls.

The letter was sent in part to address the harassment experienced by a female student who lives in Johnston Hall. The student, who was not identified, told the Residential Life Department that posters on her dorm room door supporting abortion rights had been vandalized and that related, inappropriate messages were left on the door’s message board.

It’s been six years since the endangered Topeka shiner was found in Boone County, and scientists think chances are slim that the species will ever be found naturally in local streams again.

The silver-colored minnow is an indicator species, which means its decline can foreshadow the survival of other species of fish.

Thrill seekers may now glide up and down Columbia’s second public escalator.

With the recent grand opening of the two-level Famous-Barr department store, J.C. Penney no longer operates the only public escalator within city limits.

Managers at Famous-Barr hope their new store in Columbia, along with a small fleet of others like it nationwide, will help usher in a new era in American department stores.

With more aisle space, brighter lighting and a “racetrack aisle,” the design is intended to allow the customer more freedom, a more informal shopping experience and a brighter shopping environment.

Nearly a third of the money from an $18.5 million sewer bond issue on Tuesday’s ballot would be used to extend Columbia sewers into areas ripe for development. City officials, however, say it’s impossible to say for sure which lines would be extended first.

Potential sewer extensions meeting city criteria are in nearly every local watershed, including those of Clear, Mill and Grindstone creeks. Sewer engineer Steve Hunt said policy calls for new lines to begin within city limits and extend to “80-acre” points. The points are called that because they are specific points to which 80 acres of surrounding property will drain. Once the city extends a main line, developers must cover the cost of tapping into it.

One less truck will be used to remove snow and ice from county streets this winter.

The Boone County Commission decided to use nine trucks, down from the 10 it used last year, because of the high cost associated with contracting for snow removal. Commissioners Tuesday informally decided to accept two bids: one from Highpoint Enterprises that would provide six trucks at a cost of $200 an hour, and another from Diamond “C” Services for three trucks at $250 an hour.

With the possibility looming that Rock Bridge Memorial State Park and surrounding areas could be annexed into the city, some residents of the Pierpont area bordering the park are getting worried that they will be next.

The park has asked the city to run sewer lines from Rock Bridge Elementary School to the park. In turn, the city asked the park to sign a “pre-annexation agreement,” which would annex the park when the city limits reach its boundaries.

Amanda Coggeshall, a volunteer at El Centro Latino, says she knows the challenges Latino students face adjusting to life in Columbia.

“These kids have trouble: they move here and are not used to a Midwest town,” Coggeshall said. “We want to create a safe place where students can discuss what happens to them because they are Latino in a mostly white school.”

Alcohol and other drug use accounts for between 75 percent and 80 percent of all violations handled by MU’s residential life and student life departments, said Mark Lucas, interim director of student life. Lucas spoke Tuesday in a forum in Memorial Union about alcohol on campus, one of the final events in a month-long campus alcohol responsibility campaign.

“Residential life sees approximately 1,200 cases a year and student life sees about 400 cases a year, and when they are combined the overall cases are just dominated by alcohol and drug violations,” Lucas said.

An unkempt house with a dilapidated front stoop and plastic-covered windows faces West Morrison Street in Fayette. Tonia Young rents the run-down property for $350 a month.

“How people live here, don’t ask me,” she said, pointing to a jumble of packing tape that’s holding a window together.

Volunteers with the Southern Boone County Fire Protection District are awaiting delivery of three new fire trucks that are being built from their own designs.

Two of the trucks will go to the two stations under construction north and south of Ashland, and the third will replace one of the older trucks at the district’s main station in Ashland.

There were two empty chairs at Rock Bridge Elementary School on Monday after a two-car accident Saturday claimed the lives of two Columbia children and an adult from Georgia.

From helping out on the farm to showing cattle in Chicago as a young girl, Boone County Southern District Commissioner Karen Miller was her father’s shadow.

AmerenUE filed for a new natural gas rate Thursday that, if approved, could mean a 7 percent increase in gas bills over last winter for the average residential customer, according to AmerenUE spokesman Mike Cleary.

Last one to leave the island, please turn off the lights! That’s probably what an MU student did when he packed his stuff and headed for college from a tiny coral atoll called Clipperton Island.

Their journey up the Missouri River on a 55-foot keelboat is the symbol of the great American odyssey. Next year, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s 1804 expedition of the American West returns to Missouri, where it began 200 years earlier.

St. Louis and Kansas City will hold major ceremonies for the Lewis and Clark bicentennial, but even in smaller cities like St. Charles, preparations are under way for what is expected to be a colossal event.

Trans States Airlines will offer three flights out of Columbia Regional Airport beginning Dec. 15, but only after it cuts its current schedule of five flights to two beginning Saturday.