THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2008
NEWS
3A
CAMPUS
Professor discusses history, prejudice
Langston Hughes Lecture to focus on American civil rights predecessor
Jon Goering/KANSAN
namal jeeks is the Langston Hughes visiting professor of American studies at the University of Kansas. He became interested in black history and the civil rights movement after growing up surrounded by prejudice. Speaks at 5:30 p.m. in the Tuesday at Jole Institute of Politics.
BY RUSTIN DODD
dodd@kansan.com
dodd@kansan.com
When Randal Jelks was seven years old, the city of New Orleans closed the community swimming pool near his boyhood home.
"Six years," Jelks said. "They didn't want black kids swimming in the pool."
The pool's dry, cracked concrete was Jelks' daily reminder of the divided world he lived in. Jelks' skin was too dark to swim in that pool.
Jelks, the Langston Hughes visiting professor of American studies at the university of Kansas, presents the 2008 Langston Hughes Lecture. jelks' lecture — which takes place at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics — centers on Benjamin Elijah Mays, a predecessor to the American civil rights movement.
"Martin Luther King Jr. said Mays was one of his spiritual and intellectual mentors," jelks said.
Mays, who served as president of Morehouse College, is also the subject of Jelks' second book, "Benjamin Elijah Mays: A Religious Rebel in the lim Crow South."
Growing up in the 1960s in a racially-charged New Orleans, Jelks said his interest in the American civil rights and black history started at a young age.
"New Orleans oozed with history," jelks said. "I would always ask my grandmother, 'Well, what was this like, or what was that like?'"
Jelks his childhood also shed light on some harsh realities.
Schools were segregated. The elementary school just blocks from his house was for white children only.
"In 1962 and 1963, people were still protesting so black students could go to a school where they lived by," jelks said.
Jelks' childhood in New Orleans was a cultural mosaic, and he embraced it.
"I saw people from around the world. I saw people had different stories to tell, and that's what formed me," delks said.
At age 14, he left New Orleans and moved to Chicago.
"When I got to Chicago, I asked my mama if it was Christmas," Jelks
said, "My mom said, 'Christmas?'
What's wrong with you? It's August?"
People moved so fast in Chicago they reminded a 14-year-old Jelks of last-minute Christmas shopers.
Chicago crowded streets weren't the only thing lels noticed.
"It was so intensely ethnically divided," Jelks said.
He said his time in New Orleans and Chicago molded his worldview.
"He's about standing up for the equality of people," William E. Van Vugt said. Van Vugt is a professor and the chairman of the department of
history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., a school Jelks worked at for the last 15 years.
Van Vugt said
Jelks had a provocative side.
"He was highly visible on campus, someone who was never hesitant to voice his opinion." Van Vugt said
A short time after coming to Kansas, Jelks heard a story about Langston Hughes — the Harlem Renaissance poet who spent his childhood years in Lawrence.
"Langston Hughes comes up to the hill when he's a little kid," Jelks said, retelling the story. "And standing up on the hill, Hughes said that was the first time he wanted to travel and see the world, because he could see all around."
Having Langston Hughes' name in his job title does have a special meaning, elks said.
"I saw people from around the world. I saw people had different stories to tell, and that's what formed me."
RANDAL JELKS Langston Hughes visiting professor of American studies
He called Hughes a person who helped other people to be creative in their own work.
"Tell me one other person who lived in Lawrence who's internationally known," jelks said.
he was slowly coming around to the University's sports teams. Right now, he's still a Michigan Wolverine. "I'm in Jayhawk territory, but I still bleed maize and blue," said Jelks, who graduated from the University of Michigan.
Jelks is teaching two American studies courses this semester: "African American Views of the African Continent" and a graduate seminar on "African American Religion and American Civil Rights Movement."
Jelks said his adjustment to a new University enjoyable, even if
Jelks — like the subject of his book, Benjamin Elijah Mays — is an ordained minister. He served a church in Grand Rapids, Mich., for seven years before working at Calvin College.
At the moment, Mays isn't far from leks' thoughts.
"Everybody talks about a Martin Luther King Jr. as though he had no predecessors," Jelks said. "Heroes aren't always the big giants, but some times they are these other people who are playing these roles of teaching and instructing."
— Edited by Patrick De Oliveira
》 HEALTH
Overland Park site source of complaints
ASSOCIATED PRESS
OVERLAND PARK - State health officials have ordered a landfill in south Overland Park to close by the end of 2010.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued a conditional permit that will allow APAC-Kansas to run the 167th Street landfill until Dec. 31, 2010. It must close the landfill after that
and cap it six months later. The ruling closes the land-fill 10 years earlier than APAC originally planned.
The landfill has been the source of numerous complaints over its rot-ten egg smell,
Besides the irritating odor, hydrogen sulfide can cause headaches and breathing problems for asthma suffers at low levels and lead to more extensive health problems, or even death.
which is caused by the hydrogen sulfide its emits. State officials said the landfill is one of only four in the country with such a significant hydrogen sulfide problem.
Besides the irritating odor, hydrogen sulfide can cause headaches and breathing problems for asthma sufferers at low levels and lead to more extensive health problems, or even death, from lengthy exposure to high concentrations.
About 6,000 people live near the landfill. Software developer Rick Lucas said he blamed the landfill for breathing problems plaguing his family and welcomed the landfill's closing.
The state is giving APAC additional time to operate the landfill so the company can fill in depressions on the property that allow storm water to collect in large pools. Parts of the landfill now have 10 to 12 feet of water, which state health officials want reduced to a foot or less by the end of the year.
"It's the right call," he said of the conditional permit. "I don't think it's realistic for them to shut their doors tomorrow."
The company must still sign the conditional permit to make it official. If APAC chooses not to accept the conditional operating terms, it would have to operate under its current permit and risk having to close the plant earlier than 2010, a state official said.
The water in the landfill, which accepts construction and demolition debris, is mixing with sulphur-
laced drywall and producing the toxic gas, said Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesman Joe Blubaugh.
While APAC has tried to measure and control the gas, the permit's key goal is removing the water, Blubaugh said.
The shale base of that landfill just doesn't allow water to escape," he said. "So it becomes, in effect, like a swimming pool down in there."
Environmental regulators last year hinted that they couldn't challenge the conditional permit, saying they thought the company had made progress over the last two years.
But Blubaugh said the agency has since learned more about the long-term effects of hydrogen sulfide exposure.
Last October, state officials completed a review of the company's request to expand the landfill from 50 to 82 acres. The landfill's original 1986 permit allowed a 50-acre landfill, but it expanded to 82 acres without a permit.
The conditional permit allows dumping on 82 acres as officials said the extra 32 acres are already covered in garbage and removing refuse from those areas now could release additional gas.
CONGRESS
Senate approves Kansas coal-plant bill Project viewed as economic boost, environmental hazard
BY CARL MANNING ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA — A western Kansas utility won a major battle Thursday in its bid to build two coal-fired power plants.
The Senate passed a bill allowing Sunflower Electric Power Corp. to go forward with its plants outside Holcomb, in Finney County. The $3.6 billion project has been blocked since October by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' administration over potential carbon dioxide emissions.
The bill went to the House, which plans to debate its own measure early next week. The major difference in the two bills is that the House requires utilities to generate 10 percent of their electricity with renewable resources, such as wind, by 2010 and 25 percent by 2025.
Bebellus has strongly criticized the Senate bill, which passed 33-7, six more votes than the two-thirds majority necessary to override a veto.
Bebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said the bill has a ways to go before it reaches the governor's desk.
"Clearly we are very pleased with the fact that this legislation has taken a major step forward." Watkins told reporters.
Earl Watkins Jr., Sunflower's chief executive officer, watched from the Senate gallery Thursday.
"She wasn't fond of the bill as introduced, and the Senate committee removed all of the green features before passing it, so it got so much." I quote said.
Several senators offered reasons for their voter.
Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat who voted against the bill.
"This bill leaves us with a significant carbon footprint without a forward-looking solution," said
Senate President Steve Morris, a Hugoton Republican, voted for the bill, saying, "This bill takes the first step toward securing Kansas energy security"
measure more balanced energy policy. Rep. Tom Sloan, who serves on the House Energy and Utilities Committee, acknowledged that a bill must address the state's power future needs.
Some House members argue that those provisions make their
those provisions, saying they would prevent the secretary from protecting public health and the environment and encourage utilities that have had coal-fired plants blocked in other states to build them in Kansas.
Both chambers' bills limit the secretary of health and environment's power to reject air-quality permits for projects such as Sunflower's. Secretary Rod Bremby did just that in October, citing concerns about the estimated 11 million tons of CO2 emissions expected to come from the two, 700-megawatt plants.
The final version of a single energy bill is likely to be drafted by three senators and three House negotiators.
"This bill leaves us with a significant carbon footprint without a forward-looking solution."
It's got to address the public concern about the impact of society on the environment, which includes global warming," said Sloan, a Lawrence Republican. "It does have to be balanced."
The Senate bill also would prevent the secretary from imposing some emissions rules without legislative approval.
"It's got to
"Businesses all across Kansas have to have the regulatory reform because it's so unstable now you can't do business," Neufeld said. "We have to do that."
SEN. MARCI FRANCISCO Lawrence democrat
Sebelius strongly objects to
Supporters of the project view it as economic development for western Kansas and say the state eventually will need the power from the plants.
offset any economic advantages. Many scientists have linked CO2 emissions to global warming — a factor Bremby took into consideration when he denied the permits.
Opponents said the environ mental harm will more than
Watkins called the bill a step "to move Kansas forward to address the issue of rule of law and regulatory certainty."
His decision upset many legislators because the state hasn't ever attempted to control CO2 emissions and has no rules in place.
Excluded from the Senate bill were proposed limits on CO2 emissions from new power plants and a $3 per ton tax for excess emissions for utilities that didn't comply.
Bebelius, environmentalists and some legislators viewed the rules as far too weak. Some conservative legislators objected to any plan to regulate CO2, and anti-tax groups criticized what they saw as a tax increase.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Metal fragments were found in at least two Valentine's Day lollipops sold at separate stores in central Florida, authorities said Thursday. Deputies confiscated 18 to 20 lollipops of the same brand from an elementary school late Thursday, but they did not find evidence they contained metal shards.
Metal found in Valentine's Day candy
》 HEALTH
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAKELAND, Fla. — What appeared to be a metal staple was found Thursday in a Valentine's Day lollipop at an elementary school, a day after a woman reported a blade-like piece of metal in another bag of the same product. It has been pulled from the shelves of thousands of stores across the country.
Roughly 20 lollipops, from a bag of Pokemon Valentine Cards and Pops, were seized at Kathleen Elementary School in Lakeland. X-rays determined that only one piece definitely had metal — what appeared to be a staple — baked inside, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
The Polk County Sheriff's Office issued a safety advisory and the Dollar Store chain removed the product, sold in bags of 10, from its more than 8,000 stores nationwide. The Food and Drug Administration is investigating.
On Wednesday, Lisa Potter in nearby Mulberry told authorities she found a lollipop with a piece of metal in it in a bag of the same product. The metal appeared to be part of a razor blade, authorities said.
Judd said the two tainted lollipops were purchased from different Dollar General stores near Lakeland. He said the lollipops did not appear to be tampered with and it appeared the metal was baked into the candy in China, where it
was produced.
No injuries have been reported and it was unclear whether the metal was intentionally placed in the candy.
The sheriff's office said Sherwood Brands of Maryland, which imports the candy from China, was cooperating.
"They are as concerned as we are,"udd said.
Dollar General, headquartered in Goodlettsville, Tenn., also pulled another Sherwood Brands product, Dog Artlist Collection Valentine Cards and Pops, from shelves. A store chain spokeswoman, Tawn Earnest, said no other pieces of metal have been found in the manufacturer's products.