CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, January 14, 1994
3
KKK will meet opposition at Capitol
Unity rally leaders plan counterprotest
By Denise Nell
Kansan staff writer
The Rev. Wanda M. McDaniels said she was tired of hate.
She said she wanted to prove that Kansas was a state of love and unity. She will try to do that tomorrow with the Unity Ride to the Capitol building in Topeka to demonstrate against the Ku Klux Klan's protest of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. King's birthday is Saturday, and it will be observed as a national holiday Monday.
"I think it's very sad that we've come to 1994, and we're going to continue to let hate dominate." Davis said.
McDaniels, who lives in Wichita and serves as the second vice president of the Wichita chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said her goal was to organize 1,000 cars to come from all directions to convene at the Capitol at the same time. She said people from Wichita, Kansas City, Lawrence, Junction City, Salina and Manhattan had told her they would participate. People from Oklahoma, Nebraska and Missouri also will come to Topeka.
McDaniels said she had made an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Highway Patrol and Sheriff's departments to provide an escort for the people who were joining the caravans from Wichita and Kansas City.
McDaniels, who will lead ceremonies, said the event at the Capitol would include speeches and songs that commemorated King.
McDaniels said she thought that every person had a right to free speech but that there should be limits.
"Everyone has a right to opposition, but when people decide to hate because of race, color, creed or natural origin, it's a sin and its wrong," she said.
Orion Jordan, the director of the division of facilities management at the Capitol, the office that granted the KKK the permit to hold a demonstration, said that the right to free speech was not something that applied differently to different groups.
"Our position is that a government bureau doesn't have the right to decide who has a right to freedom of speech," he said. "That's guaranteed by the constitution."
Jordan said that permits to demonstrate at the Capitol were granted on a first-come, first-serve basis. The KKK applied for its permit a few months ago, he said.
The KKK could not be reached for com-
Sgt. Terry Maple, public information director for the Kansas Highway Patrol, said that the Capitol steps would be surrounded entirely by a six-foot fence. He said the KKK would be demonstrating on the south side of the Capitol and the Unity Riders would be demonstrating on the north. The Capitol will be the block between the two demonstrations. The only people who will be permitted inside the barriers are law enforcement personnel, the media and participants in the protests.
ment.
"What we're trying to do here is to do enough planning so, hopefully, problems won't occur." Manle said.
Maple said that the KKK had indicated that it was not expecting more than 15 members to attend the protest. That and cold weather may decrease the need for police, he said.
Another factor that may decrease the need for police is that the KKK changed the time of its protest from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The Unity Riders are planning to arrive at 11 a.m.
C. E. "Sonny" Scroggins, another organizer of the event, said that some participants of the counterprotest would move to the south side of the Capitol outside the barriers at 1 p.m., the starting time of the
KKK demonstration, for a prayer vigil. He said it was important to realize that the demonstration was not against the KKK but against the message they sent out.
"For hundreds of years we've been reacting to the Klan, and now we're responding to the Klan," he said.
Terry Bell, president of the Black Student Union, said that he and a few union members were planning to attend the protest. He said the union supported the Unity Riders' efforts.
"I think that something definitely should be done because the holiday itself is very important." he said.
Bill Tuttle, professor of history and American studies, said that in some cases it was better to ignore organizations such as the KKK.
Tuttle, who taught KU's first course in African-American history, said he helped organize a protest against the KKK when it demonstrated on campus in 1988. He said that a few days after the anti-Klan rally he had found a swastika scratched into his office door and suspected it was put there by the KKK.
"I think what the Klan wants to do is provoke confrontation, to present themselves as victims," he said. "It's hard not to wage counterprotests because their message is so ugly. The best thing to do is to try to ignore it."
Bus drivers savor their freedom, the radio
Drunks, bad hygiene give drivers trouble
By Heather Moore Kansan staff writer
Every day KU students are chauffeured to classes in green and white stretch limos that cruise up and down Mount Oread with motors humming and radios blaring.
Steve Shalinsky drove for Safe Ride last semester, but he got his commercial driver's license so that he could drive the buses this semester.
Amy Solt / KANSAN
He said that he liked the freedom involved in driving the bus.
To earn extramoney Tim Morris, Overland Park senior, drives a bus for the Lawrence Bus Company. Morris has been driving for the company since September.
"There's not a boss nearby," he said. "You're not confined to one place, and you're always moving."
Shalinsky does not go to school this semester because of financial reasons and works almost full time as a bus driver.
"I start at 7:30 a.m. and work until after 9 a.m." he said. "Then I go back at noon and work until 6 p.m."
Shalinsky said the job does get dull sometimes.
"I usually have a radio to ease the boredom," he said.
"I don't have problems with anyone, but sometimes people want me to take them to places that I don't go to," he said.
Shalinsky, who drives the Naismith-Oliver route on a daily basis, said that he liked it when people told him stories while he was driving and that, for the most part, he enjoyed his job.
Shalinsky said that Lawrence streets were hard to get around on.
"People with fancy cars make it worse, and alcohol use on campus affects people's driving," he said.
When he's not driving the bus, Shalinsky likes to mountain bike, he said.
"Right now I can't because of the weather, so I watch TV," he said. "I usu-
Shalinsky said that he did not plan to drive a bus for the rest of his life.
"I plan to graduate, move to a different town, find an occupation and just do it," he said.
Tim Morris, Overland Park senior, also spends nearly 30 hours a week chaufeing other students around Lawrence.
Like Shalinsky, Morris worked at Safe Ride during the fall semester.
"I just got tired of it," he said.
Morris said that one of the problems of driving the bus was that he often could not get to classes on time. He is a psychology major who has 15 class hours in addition to his job.
Morris, who drives the Meadowbrook route, said he did have pet peeves related to his job.
"People without good hygiene and litter all over get obnoxious in the summer," he said. "It's easy, though. It's just driving around, and it pays the bills."
One of Morris' favorite stories involves the brakes locking-up when he was driv-
ing.
"Some of the buses have brakes that lock when the back door opens," he said. "We're cruising down the road, and I decide to open the back door.
"The brakes locked and everyone went forward. It wasn't funny at the time though."
Morris said that his best days were when the radio played good songs all day.
"The worst would be having a wreck, but that hasn't happened yet," Morris said.
Regents begin with inexperience
New appointees will face full agenda of issues in first term
By Stephen Martino Kansan staff writer
All of them have advanced degrees,but they might feel like college freshmen as they learn the ropes in their new endeavor.
The four appointments to the Board of Regents made by Gov. Joan Finney Wednesday, coupled with the appointment of John Hiebert in the fall, will make five of the nine-member board quite inexperienced as the Legislature goes into high gear.
"It will probably be a rather slow start for them and be a rather high learning curve for a while," said State Sen. Doug Walker, D-Osawatomie. "I would imagine that they will be tentative at first and be relying on staff a great deal."
It may not be the best time for the Regents to have rookies on the bench with their legislative agenda so full.
Finney, in her State of the State address Tuesday night, endorsed two plans proposed by the Regents; admission of Washburn University into the Regents system and support for the Partnership for Excellence, a plan to increase the salaries of Regents faculty members to equal that of their peer schools.
"Things will depend on whether the Regents are speaking with one voice on these issues," said State Rep. Duane Goossen, R-Goessel, and head of the House Education Committee.
Additionally, Finney's proposed 5.1 percent increase in the Regents budget was the largest increase offered to any area of the state government.
"It's a tight budget, and a lot of people are looking for increases. That will probably determine the fate of those proposals more than anything else," Goossen said.
Most legislators said that just because the Regents had many new members, it would not necessarily doom the proposals' chances in the Legislature.
"The ideas presented by the Regents were proposed by the old group," said State Sen. August Bogina, R-Shawnee, and head of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. "It's not going to have any effect on the way we look at the proposals."
The one area where new Regents might lag behind their more experienced colleagues is in relations with legislators and lobbying efforts to support Regents policies.
"Things might turn more on the role of tenured members taking the lead and helping to establish relations," Walker said.
However, State Sen. Sandy Praeger, R-Lawrence, stressed the importance of just getting the appointees confirmed by the Senate. Finney's last three appointees to the Regents have been turned down by the Senate.
"We've been concerned with getting quality people on the board," she said. "There will be a transition period for them to assimilate information, but it won't have a negative effect."
Praeger said that if Regents members continue to be high quality persons, higher education in Kansas would be fine.
"I think we'll move quickly and get them confirmed, and then they can start operating with a full board," she said. "That will be best."
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