THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
PAGE 7A
ADMINISTRATION
Vice Provost candidate meets with students
KELSEY CIPOLLA
kcipolla@kansan.com
Vice Provost for Student Affairs candidate George McClellan answered questions about what he would do if he got a vice provost job during a public forum Friday afternoon.
Students have the opportunity to talk to all three candidates since whoever gets the position will serve as an advocate for students and coordinate programs and services for the student body.
"I'm a higher-ed geek and more importantly I'm a student affairs geek," McClellan said while introducing himself
before taking
questions.
He said he views the job as a chance to help and encourage students through the academic process
McClellan
and aims to challenge, support and celebrate students.
"I'm a hand shaker and a hugger and a whooper and a hollerer," McCellan said of his love of celebrating student achievement.
Felix Zacharias, a graduate student from Wichita, asked several questions about McClellan's view of the role of the vice provost in establishing rules for students and limiting students' rights.
McClellan said that he had worked to change the student code at his current university to give the administration the power to suspend a student who causes substantial
harm to another student, but he would respect the judgement of the student government in such cases.
Libby Johnson, student senate president, asked how McClellan thought the position would shift and what the biggest changes would be over the next five years.
McClellan responded by explaining the biggest issues facing higher education, which include the affordability and accessibility of college, high school students enrolled in college courses and promoting economic and social justice through
universities.
"I believe we can use higher education as a tool, as a resource, and the brilliance of all of you, to create a world in which economic development and economic justice are harmonious notions," McCellan said.
Zacharias was a fan of McClellan's after hearing his sincere and humorous answers.
"If he can be the same person he was in that interview while in the position he wishes to fill at KU, I think we are going to have a fantastic vice provost for KU," Zacharias
said.
The two other candidates for the Vice Provost for Student Affairs will also talk to students in public forums this week. Beth Hellwig will be available today from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union and Tammara Durham will speak with students in the Malott Room of the Kansas Union from 1:30-2:30 p.m. on Friday, April 6.
- Edited by Christine Curtin
INTERNATIONAL
Police investigating family as possible members of deadly cult
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NACOZARI, Mexico — It was a family people took pity on, one the government and church helped with free food, used clothes, and farm animals. The men were known as trash pickers. Some of the women were suspected of prostitution.
Mexican prosecutors are investigating the poor family living in shacks outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult that sacrificed two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States.
blood was spread on a Santa Muerte altar. Their bodies were then buried near the shacks where the alleged cult members lived.
The killings have shocked the copper mining village of Nacozari, on the edge of the Sierra Madre, and may be the first ritual sacrifices linked to the popular saint condemned by the Roman Catholic Church. Known as "faquita," or "the skinny one," the figure known as Saint Death is portrayed as a skeleton wearing a hooded robe and holding a scythe, much like the Grim Reaper.
Authorities say the throats and the wrists of the victims were cut with knives and axes, and their
"We never knew they were part of a Santa Murte cult," said Jorge Sanchez Castillo, a 54-year hotel owner who has a corn field next to the house of the woman believed to lead the group. "This has been a tragic thing for all of us."
Jose Larrinaga, spokesman for the Sonora Attorney General's Office, said 44-year-old Silvia Meraz was the cult leader, and seven people related to her, were detained: her boyfriend Eduardo Sanchez, father, son, three daughters and a daughter-in-law. No formal charges have been filed pending further investigation.
Nacozari has been spared the grisly violence of drug cartels fighting for lucrative corridors along the U.S.-Mexico border, said police chief Jose Miguel Espinoza.
"They thought that by offering the blood, they would be protected for some time." Larrinaga said. "According to them, Santa Muerte was going to tell them where the money was. They all identify themselves as fanatic followers of Santa Muerte."
never seen such violence," he said.
When a 10-year-old boy went missing in July 2010, his mother and her boyfriend told police that acquaintances had seen him begging in the streets of nearby Agua Prieta across the border from Douglas, Arizona, and that they would go find him, said Espinoza.
"It was a peaceful town. We'd
A second 10-year-old boy went missing in early March, prompting Sonora state's missing persons unit to send agents to Nacozari, said the police chief. That boy's mother and her boyfriend reported it to state authorities, who discovered weeks later that the two boys knew people in common.
"We had no reason to suspect it was a homicide" he said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The missing boy Martin Rios was the son of the ex-girlfriend of the suspect Eduardo Sanchez. The second boy, Jesus Martinez, was the step-grandson of alleged cult leader Meraz.
The police chief said both boys would often visit Meraz's home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of the town of 11,500.
Espinoza said his officers suspected the house was being used for prostitution after seeing different men from out of town visiting, but never gathered enough evidence to
arrest anvone.
Agents on Wednesday unearthed the body of the boy Jesus Martinez buried in the dirt floor in the bedroom of one of the Meraz daughters. They then began arresting the family members, who led them to what agents believe are the remains of the other boy, as well as the grave of 55-year-old Cleotilde Romero, a close friend of Meraz who disappeared in 2009.
Before last week, there have only been unconfirmed reports of human sacrifices related to the figure in Mexico in recent years, said R. Andrew Chesnut, chairman of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the book "Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint."
Chesnut said the 2007 shooting deaths of three men appeared to be related to Santa Murte because the bodies were abandoned at a shrine to the figure outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo. But they showed no signs of being sacrificial killings.
He said that although most Santa Muerte devotees consider killing a "Satanic aberration of devotion," and that books about the Santa Muerte don't mention human sacrifice, some followers are extreme.
A man carries two statues of the folk saint Santa Muerte, or Death Saint in Mexico City on In October 1, 2009. Mexican prosecutors are investigating a family outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult who sacrificed three people to the Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States. The first of the three victims was apparently killed in 2009, the second in 2010 and the latest in March 2012.
"With no clerical authority to stop them, some practitioners engage in aberrant and even abhorrent rituals," Chesnut said.
Police paraded the eight people arrested in the case of the cult killings into the prosecutor's offices in the state capital of Hermosillo on Friday to allow journalists to view and question them, a typical practice in Mexico.
The University of Kansas University Theatre Presents the Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning comedy
FOREIGNER
by Larry Shue
7:30 p.m. March 30-31 April 2-4,2012 2:30 p.m. April 1,2012 William Inge Memorial Theatre
General admission tickets are on sale in the KU ticket offices: University Theatre, 864-3982; Lied Center, 864-ARTS, and online at www.kutheatre.com. Seating is limited. Tickets are $15 for the public, $14 for senior citizens and KU faculty and staff, and $10 for all students. All major credit cards are accepted. The University Theatre is partially funded by the KU Student Senate Activity Fee; the University Theatre 2011-12 season is sponsored by the KU Credit Union.
KU UNIVERSITY THEATRE
The University of Kansas
STUDENT
SENATE
KU CREDIT UNION
A MEMBER OF THE PACIFIC COUNTY CAREERS LAUNCH
Allen Field House was name for what KU Alum who was a member of which KU Fraternity?
Can you name the four different fraternities represented on the KU 1952 National Championship Basketball Team?
(BONUS QUESTION)
Employers know Baker students are prepared to care for their patients with confidence.
SCHOOL OF NURSING Visit Day 3-5 p.m.
2012 Friday, April 13
What You'll Do & See
- Meet students, faculty and staff.
- Tour the facilities where you'll take classes and clinicals.
- Ask questions and learn more about nursing school and the nursing profession.
Visit days are held at Baker's School of Nursing campus at Stormont-Vail HealthCare, Pozez Education Center. 1505 SW 8th Ave., Topeka.
Baker offers traditional and degree completion programs. Classes start in the spring and fall.
REGISTER ONLINE
www.bakerU.edu/son_visit
Questions? Contact Janet Creager
jcreager@stormontvail.org
1.888.866.4242