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TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2012
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
CAMPUS
Kansas royalty makes appearance at game
KELSEY CIPOLLA/KANSAN
Miss Kansas USA Gentry Miller, left, and Miss Kansas Teen USA Katie Taylor, right, stopped by the men's basketball game on Saturday. The two met with fans and talked about pageant life.
KELSEY CIPOLLA
kcipolla@kansan.com
The crowd at Allen Fieldhouse got the royal treatment Saturday as the reigning Miss Kansas USA, Gentry Linn Miller, a 2010 University of Kansas graduate, and the Miss Kansas Teen USA, Katie Taylor, a senior at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, paid a visit. The two stopped by to watch the men's basketball game, greet fans and discuss life as pageant participants.
How do you prepare for a pageant?
Gentry Linn Miller: I love the limelight and being on stage, so that part for me isn't stressful. But definitely the preparation up until the show is probably the hardest part.
Katie Taylor: I started working out six months prior and just kept working out and getting stricter and stricter with what I ate.
It seems like pageants get a bad reputation for being superficial. Do
you think that is deserved?
GM: Obviously, I see where it gets that bad rap. And sometimes, even people who are up there answering the questions may not give quite the right answer. It's a nerve-wracking process. But it needs to be looked into. It's more than just the looks and wearing the swimsuit. There are so many intelligent young women who do so much for their community and the state that they represent. They need to portray it more in that light.
KT; It's not what is on the outside that counts as much as what you actually put into it and what you're going to do with the crown. Once you get the crown, you're not going to be like 'Oh, look; I won.' You have to actually go out there, be involved in your community and fight for the things that you were doing before. I'm with the Susan G. Komen Foundation because my mom had breast cancer, and I'm continuing with that and trying to make my voice stronger.
How do you manage to balance
school with pageants?
KT: Its definitely a challenge. I have to keep up with all of my hard classes that I took this year. I want to go into pre-med or business, so I have to keep up with my grades. I have all of these volunteer events. But I get to go to all the games and still have a normal teenage life, just with a little twist.
How was your KU experience?
GM: I loved the University of Kansas. I was a sorority girl. I went to the business school. It was a dream come true. I wouldn't trade it for the world, and I wouldn't go to another school if somebody paid me to.
KT: I'm going to KU next year, so maybe I'll be following in Grynn's footsteps. I grew up being a Jayhawk, hating K-State. I looked at other options, but overall, out of all the college visits I've done, KU is just my atmosphere. You have to have the feeling of "Ah, I want to be here."
Edited by Taylor Lewis
POLITICS
Huntsman exits race as candidates worry about split vote
Republican presidential candidate, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, accompanied by his wife Mary Kaye Huntsman, announces he is ending his campaign, Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A splintered conservative vote in South Carolina could pave the way for Mitt Romney to win this week's pivotal primary — a contest due to have one fewer candidate after the withdrawal of moderate Jon Huntsman.
Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, will withdraw from the race Monday, campaign manager Matt David told The Associated Press on Sunday night. Huntsman will endorse Romney, aides said.
Before news of Huntsman's decision broke, Romney's other rivals wrestled with the likelihood that they'll split the vote of South Carolina's social conservatives.
"I think the only way that a Massachusetts moderate can get through South Carolina is if the vote is split," said Newt Gingrich, portraying himself as the lone conservative with a "realistic chance" of beating Romney in the first-in-the-South contest.
Polls show Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who struggled to a fourth-place finish in South Carolina during his 2008 White House run, with a lead heading into Saturday's vote. The state has a large population of evangelicals and other conservative Christians, and concerns arose four years ago about his Mormon faith.
But Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry all said Romney, after victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, continued to benefit from the fractured GOP field and the failure of social conservatives to fully coalesce around a single alternative.
Santorum said South Carolina
is "not going to be the final issue" and spoke of the "need to get this eventually down to a conservative alternative" to Romney. "When we get it down to a two-person race, we have an excellent opportunity to win this race," said the former Pennsylvania senator, who won the endorsement of an influential group of social conservatives and evangelical leaders Saturday in Texas.
Perry, the Texas governor, said it was "our intention" to compete in the next contest, Florida's Jan. 31 primary, even if he finished last in South Carolina.
Gingrich said he would "reassess" his candidacy if he lost in South Carolina and acknowledged that a Romney victory would mean "an enormous advantage going forward."
The former House speaker appealed for the support of "every conservative who wants to have a conservative nominee."
"I hope every conservative will reach the conclusion that to vote for anybody but Gingrich is, in fact, to help Romney win the nomination," he said.
The state's senior senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, started looking beyond Saturday's primary, saying, "If for some reason he's not derailed here and Mitt Romney wins South Carolina ... I think it should be over." He added, "I'd hope the party would rally around him if he did in fact win South Carolina."
To Rep. Tim Scott, R.S.C., the equation is simple: "If Romney wins South Carolina, I think the game's over. This is the last stand for many candidates."
He noted that three candidates are pursuing the evangelical vote
"very strongly, and without any question that works to the Romney campaign's benefit. It's hard to find a single candidate that rallies all of the Christian voters in South Carolina, and therefore that splintered approach will probably have a major impact" in the primary.
Huntsman campaign officials said the candidate will withdraw from the race and endorse Romney at an event in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The former Utah governor placed third in last week's New Hampshire primary despite devoting most of his campaign resources to the state. He had already acknowledged that expectations for him in South Carolina's primary this week will be "very low."
Word of the Huntsman withdrawal came on the same day The State, South Carolina's largest newspaper, endorsed him for president.
Romney took a rare day off from campaigning while his opponents focused on the South Carolina coast.
Ron Paul returned to the state Sunday after spending three days at home and off the trail. The Texas congressman, whose libertarian message propelled him into second place behind Romney in New Hampshire, attended a rally in Myrtle Beach where he picked up the endorsement of a state senator popular with tea party members.
At the Cathedral of Praise in North Charleston, Gingrich was cheered by church members as he criticized activist judges who he said had made "anti-American" rulings to keep God out of schools. Santorum spoke at the same church Saturday.
At a prayer breakfast in Myrtle Beach, Perry appealed to religious
conservatives to back his candidacy.
wno will see the job of president as that of faithful servant to the American people, and the God who created us?" Perry said. "I hope each of you will peer into your heart and look for that individual with the record and the values that represent your heart."
The candidates faced a packed week of campaign events and nationally televised debates Monday and Thursday. No Republican has won the party's presidential nomination without carrying South Carolina.
Santorum battled Romney to a
virtual tie in Iowa before falling to fifth place in New Hampshire. Gingrich and Perry fared poorly in both states.
Santorum refused to suggest anyone should drop out of the race as a way to consolidate conservative support behind an anti-Romney candidate. But he said Republican would have a hard time beating President Barack Obama in November if Romney were the nominee. Santorum cited Romney's push for mandatory insurance coverage in Massachusetts.
All three have the backing of well-financed independent groups known as super political action committees that can help keep their candidacies afloat.
Gingrich and Perry used television interviews to focus on Romney's former leadership of the Bain Capital venture capital firm. Both defended raising questions about Bain's business practices, saying Romney's tenure would come under relentless assault from Democrats in the general election.
Gingrich, Graham and Scott appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," while Santorum spoke on "Fox News Sunday" and Perry was interviewed on CNN's "State of the Union."
NATIONAL CRIME
Suicide-murder survivor begged neighbor for help
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FRESNO, Calif. — The neighbor of the sole survivor of an apparent murder-suicide in California's Central Valley said the man pounded on his door and asked for help before the woman who appears to have stalbed him tried to drag him back outside.
Authorities Monday still had not released the names of the man and woman and two children who were killed Sunday morning in a Fresno apartment complex. The coroner's office said the names would be released by police later in the day.
Jesus Gonzalez told KFSN-TV, an ABC affiliate in Fresno, that shortly before 7 a.m. on Sunday he heard gunshots and then a pounding on his door. He opened the door to find his neighbor bleeding profusely.
"I opened the door and he fell in front of me, and I take him and I pull him inside," Gonzalez said. He said that before he could drag the man inside, the woman believed to be the main suspect tried to pull him back outside again.
When police arrived at the Silver Lakes Apartments shortly thereafter, officers found the man outside with a stab wound. He told police that his wife, who was actually his live-in girlfriend, was inside causing a disturbance, Fresno police. lt. Mark Salazar said.
Gonzalez said he shouted at her,
"Hey, what happened, what happened?" and she ran off.
Before officers entered the apartment, they heard a gunshot and hurried inside.
They found four people killed inside, including a woman believed to be in her 20s with a
self-inflicted gunshot wound and a man in his 20s or 30s dead of a gunshot wound. Also inside were the bodies of an 18-month-old and a 3-year-old child, believed to be the woman's children.
The stabbing victim was taken to a hospital and was in critical condition. Hospital officials on Monday said they could not release any details about the victim until the police had identified him.
The family lived in the back of the gated apartment complex, which has neat lawns, trees and a children's playground.
Neighbors said there was no indication of violence between the couple before Sunday's shootings.
"They would come out with the baby carriage, and the man was taking care of his children," neighbor Eric Gonzalez said.
NATIONAL CRIME
Teenage boy kills sister and turns himself in to police
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 15-year-old described by a neighbor as a "nice young boy" showed up at a sheriff's department in rural Arkansas and told investigators he had shot and killed his 16-year-old sister in his family's home.
Authorities found the girl's body in a bedroom of the house near Ozark while the teens' parents were out grocery shopping, Franklin County Sheriff Anthony Boen said Monday.
Boen said he didn't believe the girl's death was accidental, although her brother appeared remorseful and had tears in his eyes when he turned himself in. Authorities are treating the death as a homicide.
"He just said that he had just shot and killed his sister," Boen said. "He didn't give a motive."
The teens' names have not been released. The boy was in custody in nearby Sebastian County because Franklin County isn't set up to house juveniles, Boen said. He's expected to appear before a judge Tuesday, although no charges have been filed yet.
The teen likely killed his sister sometime after 8 a.m. Sunday, when his parents left to go grocery shopping in Fort Smith, about 40 miles away, Boen said. The boy turned himself in at the sheriff's department about an hour and a half later.
Deputies had never been called to the home and there weren't any reports of trouble with the teens, Boen said.
A neighbor described the family as "nice and quiet" and the boy as a "nice young boy." Donna Sheppard, who lives next to the family's home, said her grandson
knew the boy from school.
"It's the most shocking thing I could have ever imagined," she said.
Sheppard said she didn't hear any gunshots before she left. for Sunday school a little after 9 a.m., and learned about the shooting when she came home from church that afternoon.
The girl's body has been sent to the state crime lab, and preliminary autopsy results are expected sometime this week.
Investigators confiscated multiple guns from the family's home and vehicle and were trying to determine which weapon had been used in the shooting.
"Both the dad and the son were avid hunters." Boen said.
The Arkansas State Police are investigating the case, but spokesman Bill Sadler declined to talk about it.