THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VOL.101.NO.144
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1995
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King verdict sparks chaos
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Fires, looting and gunfire broke out overnight and the National Guard was mobilized after four white policemen were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King. At least five people were reported killed and 138 hurt.
Hundreds of people attacked police headquarters late yesterday, motorists were dragged from their cars and beaten, and looters emptied a supermarket. Police with shotguns guard firefighters as they battled at least 40 blazes.
"Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" young men and women chanted outside police headquarters downtown. "No justice, no peace!"
Officers in riot gear patrolled in armored vehicles. Pillars of smoke rose across a wide area of the city.
"This is a matter to be reconciled by the courts and not on the streets," Wilson said.
"The fires in many cases have been very difficult for us to get to because of the hostility in the area. We're apparently getting police assistance in every case now. ... We're maxed-out now," Fire Chief Donald Manning said.
Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency and put about 2,000 National Guardsm on standby if needed to quell the violence, most of which broke out in predominantly Black South Central Los Angeles hours after the verdict.
The last time the National Guard was called in to restore order in Los Angeles was in 1965, during the Watts riots sparked by the arrest of a black man. Thirty-four people were killed and large areas burned in the uprising.
Breast cancer researchers to run tests on volunteers
By Ranjit Arab
Kansan staff writer
The University of Kansas Medical Center has been chosen as one of 270 national testing sites for a drug that some think may help prevent breast cancer, a Med Center professor said yesterday.
However, because the effectiveness of the drug sometimes cannot be determined for more than 10 years, we need a lifelong study of patients, he said.
Richard McKittick, assistant professor of medicine at the Med Center, said screening female patients for a five-year study on the effects of the anti-estrogen drug, tamoxifen, would begin this week.
The $60 million nationwide project, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., will study 16,000 women.
Half of the women will receive a daily 20-milligram dosage of tamoxifen, while the other half will receive a placebo, which is a pill that contains no medication. Doctors and patients will not be told which the women are taking, McKittrick said.
He said the study would be open to women over the age of 60 because they are in a high-risk group. However, women as young as 35 would qualify for the study if they had previous non-invasive breast cancer, a mother or sister with breast cancer or at least one previous breast biopsy.
McMittrick said the Med Center hoped to recruit 300 women for the study. He said six women had called yesterday to volunteer for the project
In the first phase of the testing, which began this week researchers
conduct a patient risk assessment of breast cancer. By May 15, the first group of patients will have begun the study.
Recruiting for the study will continue for the next two years.
McKittrick said that tamoxifen had been used for about 20 years as a treatment for breast cancer, but that this was the first study that used the drug as a means of prevention.
Along with being used to fight breast cancer, the drug also showed signs of being able to lower cholesterol and improve general density levels. McKitrick said.
Because of side effects such as hot
and weight gain, the drug is not
[for KYDWV]
"In someone who is not in a high risk for contracting breast cancer, the side effects may outweigh the benefits," McKittrick said.
He said the effectiveness of the drug had been debated by medical professionals, but it might lead to further research for a cure for breast cancer.
"It is not going to prevent all breast cancer," the McKitrick said, "But it should help some women and maybe it would give us some ideas for other studies."
Carol Fabian, professor of medicine and medical director at the University of Kansas Cancer Center, said in a written statement yesterday that the effectiveness of the drug remained questionable.
"That is why it is important that a randomized trial be conducted in large numbers of women to determine if tamoxifen is really of value in preventing cancer in high risk patients," Fabian said.
He said testing was necessary to see whether the benefits outweighed the costs.
Women interested in participating in the study should contact the KU Med Center in Kansas City, Kan., at 588-1492, 1-800-4-CANCER or the Johnson-Wyandotte counties branch of the American Cancer Society at 432-3277.
Seer related story Page 16
KU rape victims remain silent
University statistics do not reflect frequency of sexual assaults
Koss survey 1,682 rapes and attempted rapes
Ranes at KU
A disparity exists between the number of rapes reported to police and the estimated number of rapes based on a national survey.
Source: KU police; Mary Koss survey 1987
Jeff Meesey, Daily Kansan
The nationwide survey found 83 per 1,000 land campuses experienced rape or attempted rape during a given six-month period. Numbers apply to 13,513 female KU students enrolled this year.
By Shelly Solon
Kansan staff writer
In a February survey by KU, 128 women said they had been raped while they were KU students.
KU police 3 rapes (since Aug.)
D during Hawk Week last year, a KU fresher said she was raped in her residence hull room by a man she had broken
She neither told her story to police nor to counselors or doctors in Lawrence.
Because she never reported the incident, she is a rape victim that remains invisible.
She represents the many KU students whose cases have never been reported or documented in their cases. Their cases officially do not exist.
Even though this woman is one of the estimated 1,000-plus KU students who will be raped or who will barely escape rape each school year, she remains only part of an estimate.
If findings from a 1987 national survey were applied to the University of Kansas, 1,682 KU students will be raped or will fight off a rape this school year.
But the number of reported raps at KU hardly reflects this estimate, which is based on the number of women U for the 1991-92 season. U for 13,511.
Medicine, found that 83 of 1,000 women on a college campus are raped or fight off a rape during a given six-month period.
But as more research and surveys are done, the number of unreported rapes increases.
For the 1991-92 school year, KU police statistics show that three rapes have been reported on campus.
KU police estimate that for every reported rape, seven to 10 rapes go unreported.
Koss' sample included 3,167 women who were randomly chosen at 32 U.S. colleges and universities. The survey is considered one of the most reliable studies of rape on college campuses.
Applying the statistics to KU, that means about one in eight KU women experienced rape or attempted rape this academic year.
In the 1878 national survey, Mary Koss, professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona School of
Charlene Muehlenhard, director of women studies at KU, agreed with the estimates.
"I's clearly the best study in the U.S. done with students," said Muehlenhack, who has been featured in textbooks and interviewed by the British Broadcasting Company as an authority on rape.
"The problem at KU is not worse or better," she said. "It's the same as other campuses."
Sarah Russell, director of Douglas County Rape Victim Support Services, said the KU-police estimate sounded accurate.
Ten of the 45 cases Support Services has handled since September 1991 involved police, she said. The percentage of their contacts who have gone to police always has been small.
Joi Phelps, coordinator of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Education Program at KU, said college women primarily worried about whether they actually were raped and whether police, doctors, friends and family would believe them.
"Women are afraid police or medical personnel may not believe them or they will blame her for what happened," she said.
Russell said Support Services
counselors offered victims counseling and suggestions and encouraged them to contact police and receive necessary medical treatment.
Support Services does not report their contacts to police.
When women want to report rape, the group works with police and the doctors at Lawrence Memorial Hospital or Watkins Memorial Health Center. Police will be contacted, and a rape-kit examination will be done.
"Rape kit" is the term used to describe the medical examination usually done immediately after an attack. It includes doing pelvic or rectal examinations, collecting samples of hair and saliva and taking pregnancy tests and tests for sexually transmitted diseases, among other procedures.
The Douglas County district attorney is notified when doctors or hospitals do a rape-kit examination.
But most women who contact Support Services call days after the assault and do not receive the examination.
They may receive medical attention but do not have the rape-kit examination unless they report. Under those circumstances, their cases are part of confidential medical files.
"Most people, when they come to us, just don't know what to do next," Russell said.
"If it's not an immediate crisis, we tell them to see a doctor and make sure nothing is wrong, to check for newly transmitted diseases and such."
But Russell said some women did not want to go to family doctors or associate with anyone they know.
Continued on Page 9
Former KU religious group solicits, breaks University policy
By Katherine Manweiler
Kansan staff writer
The group, formerly known as Campus Connection, is affiliated with the Kansas City Church of Christ, Jeff Brown, evangelist with the church, said the group no longer had a name, but it sponsored several "Bible Talks," or Bible study groups on campus.
A religious group that lost its status last spring as an official campus organization is now breaking a University student housing agreement to recruit students, a housing official said.
Brown said he had never been informed of complaints against the group's recruiting tac
The group also recruits heavily on Jayhawk Boulevard.
But Fred McEhlene, associate director of student housing, said the group's method of recruiting in the residence halls was in violation of the student housing department's solicitation policy.
"There is nothing illegal going on and nothing immoral goes on at all," he said.
"In essence, they are soliciting, and that is in violation of University policy," he said. "In the interest of the privacy of our students, let alone our escort policy, they have no business being in those living areas, and I think the students don't want them there either."
"The fact that this is not a registered student organization makes it kind of difficult to deal with. But if a group is claiming to assist students and they are not willing to register with Organizations and Activities, that says an awful lot to me about the group," he said.
McEllenbie said students needed to be cautious about associating with a group that refused to comply with standards for registered campus organizations.
The department's escort policy requires the visitors on hall floors must be accompanied.
is a group that we know does not play square with us. They ask a student to reserve a room in the hall, which is any resident's right to room from over to this organization for their meetings.
No official complaints have been filed against the group with the department of student housing, but McElhenie said several students had complained to residence hall staff members.
"This is a group that we know does not play square with us."
Fred McElhenie
Associate director of student housing
In December 1991, Kansas University Religious Advisers found that the group that now sponsors Bible Talks did not communicate its expectations to potential members.
KURA found that the group required people not to have contact with friends or family outside the group except for recruitment purposes. KURA also stated that the group used members' confession of sins to control their behavior
The group said last spring that KURA's findings were false.
Residents of three KU residence halls said the group had recruited this semester at their halls.
Marc Angevine, Winfield freshman and Colum Hall resident, is a member of the group.
"I've never invited them to come over," Angevine said. "It's not ever something I have in mind."
He said that Steve Schmit, leader of the group, and other group members sometimes came to McCollum and walked the halls unescorted to invite students to Bible Talks.
Meisenheimer said she had seen leaders and members of the group walking around the floors of Lewis numerous times this year. One day she confronted them.
Dawn Meisenheimer, Overbrook junior and Lewis Hall resident, said she expressed concerns at the beginning of the semester about the increasing facties to JIM Musser, a member of KURA.
"I asked them what they were doing," she said. "They went into a room. If they came in, they'd door."
Musser said more than 10 students had complained about the group to individual KU religious advisers.
Schmit refused to confirm or deny the allegations.
Shawn Wooten, an employee of the Kansas City Church of Christ movement at KU, said he had never recruited students for Bible Talks in the residence halls.
"I certainly wouldn't want to say it has never happened," Wooten said. "It's definitely possible."
He said he would not comment further because Schmit did not want to comment.
Bill Tangeman, Jonesboro, Ark., freshman and Oliver Hall resident, said that he helped recruit at Oliver but that he left the group about a month ago.
"I didn't like that part of it," he said. "I don't really believe that it's necessary. I didn't enjoy it one bit, but it is a wav to talk to people."
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