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Show 6 WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2015 WSUSIGNPOST.COM THE SIGNPOST PHOTO BY CHARLES BOWKER / THE SIGNPOST Students and Professor Brian Dorsey, left, examine City of Rocks, which contains remnants from the California trail. Students learn that geology rocks By YOGI THATCHER sports reporter It’s been an eventful and exciting Homecoming week for the Wildcats, but while most of the school stayed for the festivities, a few individuals from the geography department and several other departments headed out for their own kind of excitement in the the City of Rocks National Reserve. The outing lasted for two days and nights, wherein the students and faculty enjoyed the geology, biology and history of the reserve. “It’s the perfect opportunity to learn everything in geography,” FOR MORE PHOTOS SEE PAGE 8 Professor Brian Dorsey, trip adviser and head of the geography department, said. “From physical geography to geography and historical geography, City of Rocks gives us a unique chance to learn about geomorphology and how landforms are created.” After setting up camp, the group began to record personal observations of the area’s vast rock formations, which entice nature lovers and professional rock climbers from around the world to visit them. “What I enjoyed most was just going outside and exploring a different region,” Sam Stout, a senior majoring in geography, said. “Going somewhere I hadn’t been before and just studying the geology of that area was just amazing, I never realized just how unique and how big the rocks were. You see pictures of them but you never really see how massive and unique they are in person.” The City of Rocks, also known as “the silent city,” is a United States national reserve and state park lying two miles north of the southern central border Idaho shares with Utah. Its historic importance can be dated back to the early 1800s, when it became a key point in the California, Mormon and Oregon trails. “The history was pretty interesting,” senior Drew Hodge said of the trip. “Just a few families coming down and settling that area, it changed the path to California from the Midwest which allowed us to shape the American frontier.” Stout said it brought the lessons to life. “What I learned the most about was just all the hard work it took for people to settle in that area,” he said. “All the history and all the trials that they went through with different cultures and homesteading and their ability to triumph over it.” Most of Saturday for the students was spent on hiking paths around famous rock formations while stopping to examine the local rock forms and flora. “It’s the perfect place to study,” Hodge said. “It’s a place where all the different sciences meet—like geology, geography, botany, biology. It’s just an all around beautiful area.” Not only did the students get to enjoy the scenery but also the joys of camping and meeting new people around a fire. “Good times, good people, just really good company,” Hodges said. “I love getting to know everyone,” Dorsey said. “We just relax and have fun. You’re as serious as you want to be and we learn just as much from each other as students do from me.” Students from this class will spend time working on individual reports about what they learned from the trip, which fulfills the needed class requirements. Field studies like this vary by major and, depending on prerequisites, can be available for students of all majors. For more information on field studies, talk to one of the various department heads at Weber State. Follow Yogi on Facebook @spencer.thatcher.37 Yet another Republican candidate drops out By ANNE WALTERS AND JOHANNES SCHMITT-TEGGE DPA, Berlin Gov. Scott Walker Monday became the second Republican candidate to drop out of the 2016 White House race, calling for more rivals to follow suit but sidestepping the financial issues that reportedly prompted him to quit. Without naming him, Walker took aim at Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman rival who has soared to the top of the polls with bombastic, negative and incendiary rhetoric against migrants, women, war heroes, his fellow candidates and others. “In the end I believe the voters want to be for something and not against someone,” Walker said in broadcast remarks. He encouraged others of the 15 remaining Republican hopefuls to do the same so voters can focus on a narrower field and find a “positive conservative alternative” to the current front runner. “Today I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top,” Walker said. His aides told US media that money was his biggest challenge, and donations had not been pouring in—but Walker did not refer to funding problems. In the poll averages maintained by Real Clear Politics, Walker had dropped to 1.8 per cent support among Republican voters. Walker, the governor of the north-central state of Wisconsin, follows former Texas governor Texas governor Rick Perry into the exit lane. Also on Monday, another Republican hopeful—the physician Ben Carson—was the target of calls for resignation from the race, over his objections to a Muslim ever being elected US president. Trump last week provoked outrage when he let stand a statement by someone at a question and answer session at a campaign rally that US SOURCE: MCT Gov. Scott Walker has officially dropped out of the 2016 White House race as a Republican candidate. President Barack Obama is a Muslim. Walker had seen his support plummet in recent opinion polls after at first being considered among the favorites in the race. Walker had staked his claim to national headlines in 2011, when as the newly elected governor he moved to restrict public employees’ collective bar- gaining rights and force them to pay more into their pensions and health plans. Wisconsin is a strongly Democrat-leaning state, where voters in 2012 sup- ported Democratic President Barack Obama’s re-election by a margin of nearly 7 percentage points. Tribune News Service |