CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, June, 17, 1992
3
Bosnians at KU watch fighting on CNN
By Chris Moeser
Kansan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
Every day Jasna Hadimejlil watches the soldiers destroy her country.
Every day she wonders whether her relatives are safe.
Every day the Serbian army fires rockets into the high-rise buildings of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina's capital. Their MiGs drop bombs. They rain mortar fire down on civilians waiting in bread lines.
Her brother and sister are refugees after fleeing Sarajevo to escape the fighting. Her family home is probably destroyed.
"Our life is hell now," said Sakir Hadzimeliq, Jasna's husband. "Every day we expect someone will call and say someone we know is dead."
Jasna Hadzameljic is a visiting Fulbright professor of Serbo-Croatian in the department of Slavic languages and literatures. She came to the United States last fall.
Jasna and Sakir Hadzimejic have lost all contact with their relatives in the besieged city of Sarajevo. The phones were disconnected last week he said.
But they follow the war in the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Bosnia very closely by watching CNN and by monitoring an electronic mail network on their computer.
Jasna Hadzimejie tries to ignore the war in her home of Bosnia, which has killed more than 12,000 people since the nation declared its independence from Yugoslavia Feb. 29. It's the only way she can deal with the situation, she said.
"You can see who kills the children, who have no food, no weapons," Sakir said. "We have no rockets, no mortars. It is only the Serbs who have such weapons."
YUGOSLAVIA
The Serbian army is all that remains of the
Yugoslav army, which was the largest standing army in Europe, second only to the former Soviet Union. The Serbs inherited almost all of the military hardware that existed in the Yugoslav army, and it remains one of the most highly trained armies in the world.
"It is not an ethnic war," Sakir Hadzimejilic said. "It is a war of monsters against innocent people and children."
The Hadzimejimeles blamed the bloodshed on Serbian President Slobodan Milosev, the former communist leader of Yugoslavia. They called Milosev a liar.
Milosevic has denied that Serbian troops are fighting in Bosnia. He has blamed the bloodshed on Moslems and Croats, religious and ethnic factions within Bosnia.
But Hadzimejic said the Serbian army was the only group that had weapons capable of inflicting the kind of damage that is occurring in Bosnia.
He said people in Bosnia did not try to collect armaments after declaring their independence, because they thought the United States and the nations of the European Community, EC, would help them achieve democracy.
"I am angry with the EC. How can they watch this genocide?" he said.
He also expressed anger at George Bush. In justifying Operation Desert Storm, Bush said the United States would oppose any unlawful aggression, especially where democracy was threatened.
"The people in Bosnia believed this," Hadz- imelic said.
Marc Greenberg, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures, also was critical of U.S. policy.
"I think American foreign policy has not been that forward-looking," Greenberg said. He added that the United States might have been able to do more to limit the violence in Yugoslavia.
He said that when the republic of Slovenia declared its independence from Yugoslavia last summer, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker immediately said that it was in America's interest to keep Yugoslavia united.
"That gave the Serbian government a carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to do," Greenberg said.
Shortly after that announcement, Serbian MiGs were in the air bombing Slovenia.
But Greenberg did not think intervention in the war would stop the bloodshed because the situation in the Balkans was both economically and ethnically motivated.
mer Yugoslav states were motivated initially by economic factors. The provinces in the North, such as Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia, were wealthier than the Southern provinces of Serbia and Macedonia.
He said the secession movements in the for-
The economic divisions were complicated by ethnic rivalries among Serbs and Croats and Serbs and Albanians, another ethnic minority.
Greenberg said the Serbs had especially distrusted the Croats since Word War II, when the Croats控制 Yugoslavia under the fascist Ustasha government. The fascists murdered thousands of Serbs during the War.
Greenberg said the Serbs were attempting to annex all parts of Yugoslavia that have Serbian populations. Bosnia, for example, contains more than one million Serbs. He compared the situation to Germany in the 1930s under Hitler.
"Next the Serbs will attempt to drive the Albanians out of Kosovo," he said. That could result in genocide, he said.
Greenberg said he was convinced the Serbs had already committed genocide in parts of Bosnia and Croatia. There have been reports of mass shootings of civilians, he said.
Similarly, the Serbs attacked Dubrovnik, a city on the Adriatic Sea that is a cultural monument for Croats. The attack was motivated by ethnic hatred, he said.
He warned that the war could ignite a trans-Balkan war involving Greece, Turkey and Albania. All of those countries have historical and cultural ties to Yugoslavia.
She doesn't know when she will be able to return home.
But Jasma Hadzimeljic is not interested in talk of a bigger war. She wants only peace.
"I am lucky because I have a chance to start over," she said. "My friends had so many hopes and dreams. There is no way for them any more."
AROUND CAMPUS
Upward Bound assists high school students in preparing for college life
Members of the University of Kansas Task Force on Sexual Harassment have listened to the suggestions of the University community, which will help them produce a list of clearly defined sanctions defining procedures for handling issues of sexual harassment. The original list of 10 recommendations was distributed throughout the University community for input this spring. See story page 5.
Financial aid and tutoring provided by federal program
Senior citizens are returning to college at the University of Kansas and other colleges and universities across the country. Programs like the Bostonbased Elderhostel cater to these older students in 50 states and 40 countries. In the Elderhostel program, seniors live the part of university students.
By James Baucom Special to the Kansan
Nearly 50 high school students of various backgrounds are getting a head start on life by participating in a six-week college preparatory program at the University of Kansas.
Upward Bound is a federally sponsored program designed to prepare economically disadvantaged students for post-secondary education by providing them with tutoring in academic subjects, exposure to cultural and social events, financial aid and academic counseling.
The program keeps students busy all year long, but during the past 13 summers, students from Kansas City, Topeka, and Lawrence have come to campus to improve their academic and study skills while experiencing a taste of college life.
The KU summer program began last week, but students have benefited from the program throughout the year.
"I brought my biology grade from an 'F' to an 'A'" said Hilari Hermann, a sophomore at Highland Park High School in Topeka. She said that she attributed her improvement to the help she received from the program's after-school study sessions at her
high school. All of the students attend such sessions, where KU students provide tutoring and assistance.
Erin Smith, a junior from F.L. Schlage High School in Kansas City, Kan., said, "The summer program puts me ahead six weeks."
Lamont Richardson, a senior from Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kan., made similar comments.
"By being in this program...I do have an advantage," he said.
Richardson has an extra incentive to do well academically. He will receive a Kauffman scholarship, which will pay for four years of study at a Kansas college or university. Richardson said that he planned to come to KU in the fall and major in business administration/pharmaceutical sales.
Upward Bound director Ngoni
Kamatuka said the program helped to
make a difference. Kamatuka said he
had noticed not only an increase in
the number of students who applied
for the program, but also an increase
in the caliber of applicants.
Many of the students in the program attend KU after high school because they have been coming to KU for four summers, Kamatuka said. All the students who stay in the program graduate from high school, and 96 percent are accepted into post-secondary education institutions.
"Our students have a yearning to learn, so what we have been doing is trying to teach them what they want to learn," he said.
Veronica Shorter (left) and Lamont Richardson learn how to square dance at Robinson Gymnasium on Monday nights as part of the Upward Bound program.
Stephen Pingrv/KANSAN
Wedding bells ring hundreds of times a year at Danforth
By Julie Wasson
Kansan staff writer
When Ben and Penny Custer decided to get married, choosing where to hold the ceremony proved to be one of the biggest problems they faced.
"Ultimately, the decision came down to wanting to find a place where we could have the type of wedding we wanted," Penny Custer said. "We wanted to write our own ceremony, and a lot of churches we looked at balked at that.
"Also, Ben graduated from the University of Kansas, so we thought about Danforth Chapel."
When they learned that Danforth would allow the type of ceremony they wanted, the couple chose to wed there. On May 23 this year, they became one of more than 4000 couples who have been married in the chapel in the 46 years since its dedication on April 2, 1946.
Ann Eversole, director of the organizations and activities center, said the chapel's endowment stated that the building was to be used for individual meditation, weddings, funerals and bantisms.
She said the most common use of the chapel was as a meeting place for student organizations but that weddings were the second most popular event at the chapel.
Weddings take place in the chapel throughout the year, but Eversole said that May and June were the most popular months.
"A lot of students are married in the hall right after graduation," she said. "And June is traditionally a popular month."
The chapel housed 23 weddings in May, and 24 are scheduled for June. In the past year, about 165 weddings were held. Totals usually did not stay far from that number. Eversole said
"But we get requests daily," she said. Greg and Kay Sherman, both KU graduates, were married in the chapel in August 1990.
"We tried to keep the guest list short," Kay Sherman said. "But the chapel was still really crowded. It was great, though, because since we both graduated from KU, the chapel was very sentimental."
"I'm glad we chose Danfort," Greg Sherman said. "Most of our seemed were from KU, too, and it seemed like an appropriate place. It added to our memories of KU."
Most of the couples married at the chapel are or have been affiliated with the University, but Eversole said that some couples were community members who were not associated with KU.
"Anyone may use the chapel," Eversole said.
And couples should plan ahead when making reservations, she said
There is no fee to use the chapel, but Eversole said there were some trade-offs.
"There are no dressing rooms in the chapel," she said. "So you just have to get ready somewhere else. Most people don't seem to mind."
Although the chapel is small, Penny Custer said it provided the right atmosphere for her wedding.
"We had a small wedding, with family and close friends," she said. "The chapel was very sentimental. It's the perfect place."