Lisa Phu

City manager Kim Kiefer was set to retire at the end of the year after 32 years working for the City and Borough of Juneau. She’s now postponed that to the end of April to help with the budget development process.

The position opening was advertised in newspapers around the state, with organizations including the Alaska Municipal League, and relevant job boards. There were 33 applicants.

“They had some folks in the pool that they thought were possibilities, but they didn’t feel like they had enough of a selection so they’ve extended the recruitment period,” said Mila Cosgrove, the city’s human resources director.

Cosgrove said the assembly will repost the job in mid-December.

The assembly plans to review the applicant pool again in January and hopes to make a selection by the end of February.

“Sharing Our Knowledge: A Conference of Tlingit Tribes and Clans” starts Thursday at 8:30 a.m. at Centennial Hall in Juneau. About 400 people are expected to attend.

The clan conference is a gathering of elders and academics, tradition bearers and students. The concept of the event, which started in 1993, came from the late Tlingit scholar Andrew Hope III.

“In many ways there was a power imbalance where our stories were being told, our culture was being talked about, our people were being talked about, and the people had very little control over that. They had very little way to exercise their voice and to share who they really are. And so it was the idea that we come together as equals,” Hope’s son, Ishmael Hope, said.

The first clan conference was in Haines and Klukwan and the event continued taking place around Southeast Alaska through 1997. It was revived in 2007 and now takes place every two years.

Hope is looking forward to hearing from the elders.

“Our elders have a vast library of knowledge, things to share, and we still have our elders. Sometimes people talk so much about cultural loss, how much is not there, but I think it’s a gift with the elders that we have, and what they’ll present,” Hope said.

The clan conference includes three days of presentations and seminars. The roughly 40 sessions range in topics from art to ecology. Plenary sessions take place Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings.

“The conference theme – Haa Saax’ú, Haa Latseení, Our Names, Our Strength – that theme will be illuminated by Norma Shorty who’ll be talking about finding our names. Friday morning, Tom Thornton and Harold Martin will be talking about place names. And Saturday morning, there will be an author’s panel,” said linguist Alice Taff, one of the event organizers.

The conference’s all-day events include a weaving exhibit, a Native Arts market, a viewing of photos from the Cyril George collection and a chance to listen to Alaska Native educational stories through “StoryCorps @ your library.”

Beth Weigel with Juneau Public Libraries says the listening booth will feature excerpts from interviews recorded in Juneau, Haines and Klukwan. Clan conference attendees can also record their own stories alone or with a friend or family member.

“It’s a great format for passing down stories through the generations and telling people about experiences that they’ve lived and they want to share and make sure that that voice stays alive, the sound of that voice as well as the stories from that person,” said Weigel.

The clan conference will also feature special events honoring the late Walter Porter, the late Richard Dauenhauer and a reading of indigenous literature at the Governor’s Mansion.

Writer Nick Jans calls the years between 2003 and 2009 “a magical and transformative time” in Juneau’s history. It was during those years that a wild black wolf, who came to be known as Romeo, lived in the community, played with dogs and interacted with residents.

Jans spoke at the University of Alaska Southeast last week about his 2014 book “A Wolf Called Romeo.”

Nick Jans was living in a house near Mendenhall Glacier when he noticed tracks right outside his door “and out into the lake and at the end of those tracks was a wolf.”

Jans said it wasn’t just any wolf, “He’s like the combined version of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger wrapped up in the young Paul Newman of wolves.”

The wolf continued visiting Jans’ house.

“The old expression of a wolf at the door took on a completely new meaning,” Jans said. “I mean, how are we not going to interact with this wolf? (Be)cause there he is, practically every damn morning. We could stay inside the house and sometimes the tracks would lead right up to the door, literally.”

Jans said it was this social behavior that led to his naming. The wolf was fond of Jans’ yellow lab Dakotah, of whom Jans’ wife was very protective.

“It’s her child and the most precious thing in this universe so, of course, she’s concerned about who her child hangs out with. And one morning the wolf is curled up in the yard waiting for Dakotah to come out and take a pee, which sooner or later, she’s got to do, and my wife with her arms folded says, ‘There’s that Romeo wolf again,'” Jans said.

Dakotah was one of several dogs that Romeo interacted with socially. There was a Border Collie who’d run away with Romeo but always came back. Other dogs raced around the frozen lake with him.

“The wolf briefly took up the sport of pug bowling when, in the space of two weeks, he grabbed two different pugs owned by two different people on two different sides of the lake and ran with them for a short period in his mouth and dropped them,” Jans said. He suspected Romeo thought the dogs were puppies and was just trying to play with them.

Many people visited the glacier, where Romeo often spent time, in hopes of glimpsing him. Jans described him as the community wolf. He said Juneau was lucky to be able to know a wild animal so well.

“One of my fondest memories my whole time in Alaska was lying with my head on my pack, with my dog Gus’ head on my knee and the wolf lying 15 feet away, and we all took a nap out there on the ice. Everybody trusted each other enough to shut our eyes and just be,” Jans said.

He said several people in Juneau shared moments like that with Romeo. And many more heard his echoing howls.

“They’d travel for sometimes a couple miles at night and you could hear him on the far side of the lake. You could hear him sometimes way up the West Glacier Trail and they just filled the whole universe,” Jans said.

After six years in the community and interacting with hundreds of dogs, Romeo was killed in 2009. A plaque remembering him is affixed to a rock near the glacier. A Juneau Community Foundation fund is raising money to build an exhibit in his honor at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.

“And it’ll be part of Juneau’s legacy and something that visitors and residents will be able to point to and to look at and to know that we didn’t somehow dream this up, that it was real,” Jans said.

Despite how he may have died, Jans doesn’t think the story of Romeo the wolf is a tragedy. He thinks it’s a triumph. It’s the magical story of a friendship between a wolf and a community.

After three hours of testimony and discussion, the Juneau School Board on Tuesday night rejected a proposal to start a STEM charter elementary school in the district.

When the Summit STEM School was first proposed to the board in August, organizers said it would be located in four classrooms within an existing Mendenhall Valley elementary school, but didn’t specify which one. On Tuesday night, Superintendent Mark Miller said, if approved, it would be located at Riverbend Elementary School.

That school’s principal Michelle Byer says she was informed of this on Oct. 8 and was concerned about negative impacts to her school. Her testimony came amid other comments from Riverbend parents.

“You have heard the concerns from our community – the Riverbend community – fear of losing staff, having splits across all grades. Should this happen, parents who can have already told me that they would look for a different school,” Byer said. “These are some of the concerns, but the question is this: If this is good for some children, why not for all? We had a number of open positions this last year and would’ve embraced these great ideas. We would love to be a magnet school and serve an entire population.”

Retired principal of Juneau-Douglas High School Sasha Soboleff testified in favor of the Summit STEM School as a charter school.

“I’m here to support the effort of recognizing that there are children in our school district today who fail, not because you’re not good teachers, but they fail because you haven’t recognized their unique skill set of learning for which charter schools generally do very, very well in because they are very specifically driven to recognize that skill set,” Soboleff said.

During board discussion, Vice President Andi Story said she’d rather see STEM touch more students’ lives through a magnet school. She spoke against approving the charter proposal.

“When we’re going to have the 80 students go to another program, those students are not in our general operating fund anymore, and so we’re going to have to lose some services if we don’t plan for more money at some of the neighborhood schools,” Story said.

New school board member Josh Keaton supported the STEM school. He said he’d rather start with the current proposal than wait for the perfect proposal for a magnet school.

“I have high hopes and I firmly believe that by voting yes to this proposal we are beginning the implementation of STEM education throughout Juneau, not just the charter school. We are taking that stepping stone to start the process so we can implement it throughout the district,” Keaton said.

Keaton and fellow new board member Emil Mackey were the only yes votes in favor of the charter school. At a candidate debate in September, Mackey had said he did not support it.

The motion to approve the Summit STEM School failed 5-2.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks violated its own policy regarding sexual misconduct cases between 2011 and 2014. University students responsible for rape and other sex crimes were not expelled or suspended during that time.

It’s unclear how far back the improper punishment goes, but UAF said it is committed to turning that culture around.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has found five instances of sexual misconduct when proper student disciplinary actions did not take place. Three of those cases involved rape.

Mae Marsh is Title IX coordinator at UAF. Her office handles sexual misconduct complaints. She said not properly punishing sexual assault offenders in the past sent the wrong message to students.

“Our silence was acceptance in some ways, but now we’re going back and we’re correcting that and that’s why we’re going public with it because we’re breaking the silence. You’re not alone anymore. This is it. We’ve got a new standard on how things are going to be on our campus,” Marsh said.

Marsh joined UAF in 2012. UAF hired two investigators to look into sexual assault complaints in 2014. Prior to that, complaints were investigated by Residence Life staff, since most complaints took place in the dormitories. Formal sanctioning was the responsibility of the dean of students.

“It’s not just that one person failed to do something. It was an entire system,” Marsh said.

UAF took other measures against the students found responsible of sexual misconduct between 2011 and 2014, like not allowing them in dorms or on campus. All five cases also went through the criminal process with Fairbanks police and the district attorney.

For the victims, Marsh said UAF provided counseling, medical assistance and academic help.

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Education put all colleges and universities on alert that sex discrimination, including sexual violence and sexual harassment, is prohibited by Title IX laws. The University of Alaska system is in the middle of an audit by Department of Education for possible Title IX violations.

It’s taken a few years, but Marsh said UAF has set up a structure to handle and track sexual assault complaints.

“We have updated our policies, we’ve appointed coordinators, we’ve trained our professionals. We are in the process of installing a centralized tracking system. We had a huge awareness campaign that came out. We’ve trained all our employees. We’re implementing the climate surveys,” Marsh said.

Marsh hopes these things have helped students feel more comfortable reporting sexual misconduct.

In 2012, UAF had four reports of sexual misconduct. Last school year, there were 44. Those numbers are still low compared to national averages which show one in five females experience sexual assault while in college.

Of those 44 reports last school year, four involved rape. One case has been investigated and the perpetrator is awaiting school sanctioning. The other three cases involve one alleged perpetrator and are still being investigated. The two men in these cases have been arrested.

Marsh says UAF is in the process of rectifying the old cases. She says UAF will be retroactively sanctioning the students found responsible for sexual misconduct with suspension or expulsions. They won’t be able to re-enroll at UAF.

About 300 people heard Dr. Astrid Pujari’s talk at Centennial Hall on Saturday during this year’s Cancer Connection Health Forum. The Seattle-based doctor spoke about mindfulness being both a way to prevent and live with cancer.

“Stress is a fear response to life and we have a choice about how we react to an event; we don’t have to automatically react with fear. Mindfulness is the process by which we become aware of that choice and then choose something else. But in order to achieve that, you have to practice,” Pujari said.

She led the audience through a series of breathing exercises and a short meditation. Pujari showed scientific data supporting how doing these practices can make a difference in physical health and cancer prevention, not just mental well-being. She presented preliminary research linking telomeres – DNA at the end of chromosomes – and aging. She said new studies suggest meditation and other lifestyle changes can prevent the shortening of telomeres and, in turn, many diseases.

“So that’s actually pretty profound – that we might be able to do something psychologically to affect our physical DNA is a big deal,” Pujari said.

Alaskans, she said, may be ahead of the curve when it comes to mindfulness.

“People in Juneau, people in Alaska, because they’re in a place that’s so naturally beautiful, they’re going to care more about lifestyle in a way that perhaps isn’t accessible to someone who doesn’t live in nature in the same way. Because of that, they have the potential to become more aware of what their thoughts and their feeling and how those things are affecting their inner state, but also their physical health,” Pujari said.

Cancer Connection has been holding health forums in Juneau for about 17 years. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide support to Southeast residents dealing with cancer and connect them to resources. It offers support groups, counseling and travel assistance.

President Ruth Johnson said the forum allows people to access information on cancer prevention, treatment and intervention resources. And she hopes it fulfills the organization’s mission set by founder Mike Miller, who was diagnosed with a terminal form of prostate cancer at age 42.

“He flew out of town. This highly energetic man in the prime of his life was terrified. He was very lonely, he was very afraid and he thought, ‘If I survive this thing, no one in my community is going to deal with this alone again,'” Johnson said.

So far this year, Cancer Connection has provided travel assistance to 37 individuals and fields about a hundred calls a month on inquiries for support and service.