SPORTS: The women's basketball team will face No.5 Colorado at Allen Field House tonight, Page 7.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VOL.102,NO.94
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
(USPS 650-640)
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1993
NEWS:864-4810
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE DAY
Illustration by Rob Tapley / KANSAN
A conservative with a curveball
From the columnist's mound, George F. Will lets fly with pitches on both loves: baseball and politics.
Bv Bradv Prauser
Kansan staff writer
G
orge F. Will knows what his priorities are. They certainly are not White House dinners. Unless the President invites the right men.
During the Reagan years, Will turned down most dinner invitations from his friends, Ron and Nancy.
"I was friends with the Reagans and only went to two," Will said. "I found it such a tedious bore that I wouldn't go to any. I'd get invited and say, 'No thanks, don't invite me.'"
He went to his second White House dinner when mikhail Gorbachev was there. "But that is not the reason I went," Will said, "Nancy Reagan called me and said, 'If you come, you can sit with Joe DiMaggio. If I did. It was a great experience."
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Will, a noted columnist and political commentator, is at KU today to accept the William Allen White Foundation national citation during noon ceremonies at the Kansas Union Ballroom. Trustees of the foundation annually select a recipient who mirrors the journalism service of White, the former Emporia Gazette editor and Pulitzer Prize winner.
Politics and baseball are the passions of Will's life. And the Maryland columnist's
brand of baseball is much like the conserv vative brand of politics he endorses
Allan Cigler, professor of political science, said it was not surprising that Will, a lifelong Chicago Cub fans, had similar views about baseball and politics.
"George Will is the sort of nostalgic conservative," Cigar said. "It's the Wrigley Field without lights that he loves. I think to him, baseball represents what is best in American traditional values and it also represents what has gone wrong with traditional values."
In his best-selling book "Men at Work," Will asserts his love of traditional, conservative baseball — yesterday's game of scratching out runs one at a time through the hit-and-run, stolen base and the bunt.
"The important thing about 'Men at Work' is that it is as close as a reporter has gotten to contemporary baseball players in talking about the specifics of their profession," said James Carothers, associate dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and instructor of a Literature of Baseball course. "It's also important as a cross-over book by a well-known writer who is not essentially a sportswriter."
Lawrence resident William B. Dickinson is a trustee of the White foundation and founder of the Washington Post Writer's Group, which began syndicating Will's column 20 years ago. Dickinson championed Will as a deserving recipient of the White citation.
"George is extremely articulate and politically oriented, just as William Allen White was," Dickinson said. "He is a Midwestern philosopher in the way that White was. He seeks a larger vision of political events."
Dickinson will be introducing Will at a noon luncheon, with Will delivering the annual William Allen White address afterward. Dickinson said Will was looking forward to his acceptance of the citation and his visit to KU.
"He realizes its significance in the business," Dickinson said, "and that it is one of the premier honors for journalists because it is associated with the name of William Allen White and the quality of previous recipients."
Dickinson's assessment will have to do.
Will declined a request for an interview
this week. His staff said Will's father was gravely ill. His comments were gathered from a video tape provided by his office.
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Of the eight books Will has written, only "Men at Work" is about baseball. The rest are collections of Will's columns or are political analyses.
Will, author of biweekly columns for the Washington Post and Newsweek and a regular commentator on ABC's "This Week With Drink Brinkley" and "World News Tonight," is one of the most widely heard conservative voices in the nation. His *Washington Post* column appears in 480 newspapers worldwide.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for dishuman skin and more reliable."
Story continued, Page 10.
Law dean apologizes for memo
Washburn associate dean says remarks could cause distrust
By Dan England <ansan staff writer
Robert Jerry, KU dean of law, apologized in a written statement yesterday for criticizing Washburn University's law school in a Nov. 30 memo to Del Brinkman, vice chair of academic affairs.
"Iregret the public release of some extremely casual language in that memo, because I believe that the Washburn School of Law has made tremendous strides under the excellent leadership of Jim Concannon, has many outstanding alumni in the state and nation, and is a quality institution," Jerry said in the statement.
Concannon is dean of Washburn's law school.
Robert Jerry
In the memo, leaked to the press on Wednesday, Jerry said that Washburn was a "low-quality law school, with faculty whose credentials cannot even compare to ours ... and with a student body of significantly lower quality."
Jerry said in yesterday's statement that he had met with Concannon to apologize for "the misunderstandings that have developed because of my poor choice of words in a private communication." Concannon and Jerry both were in Boston for an American Bar Association meeting.
Jerry also said that Kansas needed two quality law schools but that he stood behind the concerns he expressed in the memo about state funding for his own institution.
Allen Easley, associate dean of law at Washburn, said he thought that the remarks would create some tension and distrust between the two schools.
"I think a lot of the students and faculty are angered by some of the assertions made," Easley said. "I don't think the upset goes beyond anger because I think almost everybody here recognizes that most of what the memo said is false.
"The assertion that we are a low-quality law school, that our faculty is low-quality, that our student body is low-quality is simply not the way we view ourselves."
Easley said that even though the memo was not meant to be public, the scrutiny it had received was appropriate.
"I think that even when you write a confidential memorandum, you always need to be careful to make sure that you are saying what you mean," he said.
The buzz about the memo reached the floor of the Kansas House of Representatives yesterday. State Rep. Don Smith, D-Dodge City, criticized Jerry before a full session.
"This memo was inappropriate," Smith said. "As a graduate of Washburn law school, I would say that both are good law schools, and there are fine graduates coming out of both."
State Rep Katiehleen Sebelius, D-Toppea, who has a master's degree from KU, said Jerry's comments were "fairly
"I think he's taking a broad brush and painting a large percentage of the lawyers in this state as being from an inferior law school," she said.
Jerry sent the memo to Brinkman, who is Jerry's immediate supervisor, to express his concerns with the state's funding system.
Brinkman said yesterday that the memo was one of several Jerry had sent him about his concerns on the financing of KU's law school and that he did not know how the memo was leaked to the press.
Only he and two associate vice chancellors in his department saw the memo, he said.
Brinkman said he hoped something positive would come out of the situation.
"Maybe now the deans of the two schools can sit down and discuss how they feel about each other in a constructive talk," he said.
Kansan staff writers Ben Grove and Will Lewis contributed.
See Jerry's memo, Page 5. and related stories, Page 6.
During his visit to Kuwait, KU professor Robert Harrington saw the shocking images of a war-torn country and its people. His mission there was to help start the healing process.
Helping to heal Kuwait
See story, Pago 3.
Snakes slither for scientists
KU research labs use shed skin in studies
By Jess DeHaven
Kansan staff writer
They wait, coiled, tense, tails rattling, prepared to strike at the slightest provocation.
People may find them frightening, but the approximately 80 snakes in Mallowt and Haworth halls are useful in research laboratories on the KU campus.
The Animal Care Unit in Malott and Haworth is home to the snakes, said Jeff Whipple, the animal care unit's herpetologist who also takes care of 60 snakes at the Natural History Museum in Dyche Hall. Herpetology is the zoological study of reptiles and amphibians.
Between 35 and 60 black rat snakes are part of an experiment involving drug transport studies.
Howard Rytting, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, who is in charge of the experiment, gathers the shed skin from the snakes and applies drugs to the skin. He studies how drugs rubbed on the skin or absorbed through drug patches penetrate the skin.
Rytting is working with Morris Faiman, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, on a patch that weans people from alcohol in a way similar to the patch that weans people from nicotine.
Rytting said using the snakes in his study provided several advantages.
"Lots of people will use hairless mice or rats, but you have to kill them," Rytting said. "With the snakes, all you need is the shed skin, and you don't have to harm the animals. Also, the snake skin is closer to
if they can't make it here, they might as well forget it," Whipple said.
The unit uses about 45 more snakes, half of which are poisonous, in other studies. Most of these snakes are rattlesnakes or constrictors.
The lab has an emergency button to alert the staff in case a snake bites someone. But injuries with the animals are uncommon. Whipple said.
Whippe calls the room that houses these snakes the miracle room because, he says, it is also where all the sick or injured snakes are kept.
"I got bit very hard by a boa constrictor about three years ago, and it hurt," he said. "It was my fault though. If you give them room, food and respect and give yourself time to get experience, you won't have many problems."
Jeff Whipple, staff herpetologist at the Animal Care Unit in Malott Hall, shows one of the snakes that is in his care.