The University Daily
Drinking delays Senate stalls on vote to raise age Inside, p. 9.
KANSAN
SUNNY
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 94, No.131 (USPS 650-640)
High, 65. Low, 45.
Details on p. 2.
Friday morning, April 6, 1984
Illicit adoption scheme leaves couples waiting
By GRETCHEN DAY Staff Reporter
Steve and Susan Palacioz, who after six years had given up hope of having children, took the regular adoption route and ran up against the lowest listing lists associated with well-known agencies.
Flipping through the Yellow Pages, they came across another agency that immediately offered the Wichita couple a baby, to be delivered within six to nine months — guaranteed.
"My immediate reaction was 'What are you doing, stealing babies?' " Steve Palacioz said yesterday. But he said he was assured by James Matthews at Adult and Child Services Associates Inc., of Wichita, that the offer was legitimate and guaranteed.
MORE THAN A year and about $4,000 later, the Palacios are still waiting, as are more than 100 other couples throughout the United States, for their baby to be delivered from Mexico.
The "Mexican Adoption Scam," marred by the emotional upheavals of unfulfilled adoptions, has attracted national media attention, prompted Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiries and inspired legislation and lawsuits
including one file by Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan.
The Palaciozes, along with a legal aid for Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., and others, were recently guests on the Phil Donahue show, which will be broadcast Tuesday in the Lawrence area.
The investigation begins
The saga begins in Chase, Kan., where Pat and Don King became caught up in the adoption net that would ultimately stretch from New Jersey to Oregon to Mexico.
They had been trying to adopt, Pat King said, but with two biological children of their own, they were not getting the same attention as childless couples.
So on Jan. 16, 1983, when Matthews' Wichita agency offered to deliver a Mexican baby to the Kings, they quickly completed the necessary paperwork and paid Matthews, she said. Their child was never delivered, and they haven't seen their $4,000 since.
In December, John Grubb, Chase's one-man police department, heard of the Kings' plight. So he put his investigative instincts to work to try to learn the whereabouts of the Kings' baby.
AFTER GRUBB PUBLICIZED the King's problem, others in the same predicament began
to contact him, and the pieces began to come together.
Grubb said that as of yesterday, 38 states had reported similar unfulfilled adoptions.
Last month, the Kansas attorney general's office filed suit in Shawnee County District Court on behalf of 12 Kansas couples who said they had been misled. The suit names as defendants: Debbie Tanner, Willcox, Ariz.; Bice Kelley, Market, Iowa, and Bryan M. Hall, EI Paso, Texas.
The 12 couples paid $46,700 total for adoption services that were not completed, said Neil Woerman, special assistant to the attorney general. Two Kansas couples did receive adoptive children through the three people named in the suit.
Although the trio advertised in newspapers, Woerman said, in Kansas they primarily worked through adoptive agencies, such as Matthew's Adult and Child Services.
And he said Matthew had not been named in a suit because the state could not show that he used deception.
The Mexican connection is mired by a tangled series of apparent deception and fraud.
A series of deceptions
Grubb said that Tanner, Koleley and Hall would contact adoptive agencies about providing Mexican orphans for American parents. The family is under the Hermesian role for individuals wanting to adopt.
"Tanner is the kingpin of the group," he said. She worked under an organization called Casas Para Los Ninos, which is Spanish for homes for the children.
Grubb said Tanner would lure couples into the adoptive services by using "show babies". Adoptions of Mexican children would be welcome if he said, and this would entire others to adopt.
The babies that were adopted were probably bought on the black market, Grubb said.
IN ONE INSTANCE, Hall and Tanner gave a Mexican woman papers to sign, which she thought would allow her four children to live in foster homes and study in the United States. In fact, when she saw that she couldn't read because they were in English, the woman actually relinquished her children.
He said that the children had been found in Colorado and Utah, but that he didn't know whether they would be returned to their natural mother.
"We haven't been able to prove kidnapping," he said.
The magnitude of the situation has prompted Sen. Dole to introduce a bill that would create a federal law making fraudulent adoption schemes that go across state lines illegal and that would impose civil and criminal penalties.
Proposal for a federal law
Steve Palacioz said that he was most bitter toward Matthews, the man who had arranged the adoption with Tanner.
Matthews and other adoption agencies in Kansas had been warned by the state that Tanner, Hall and Kelley had been named in an earlier suit in Iowa, Palacio said.
The Palaciozes had already initiated adoption proceedings when Matthews was notified of the suit, he said, but Matthews did not heed the warning.
"He played with people's emotions," Palacioz said.
IN A STRANGE TWIST of fate, however, the Palaciozes are expecting their first child in August.
Grade board gets approval from council
Palacioz said that although the adoption was emotionally upsetting, "I hate to think how I'd feel right now if my wife wasn't pregnant. I'd be eaten up with anger."
Plan would offer means of appeal for KU students
By JENNY BARKER Staff Reporter
The University council yesterday unanimously approved a proposal that would give KU students recourse for getting a grade changed.
If approved by University Senate and Chancellor Gene A. Budig, the proposal will create a grade appeals board that hears complaints from instructors have refused to grant them.
Currently, if an instructor refuses to change a grade, that grade cannot be changed. The only cases in which a grade can be changed without the instructor's approval is if the instructor has died, has been incapacitated, or has been found guilty of sexual harassment or academic misconduct.
UNDER THE PROPOSAL, students could only make appeals to the board after they had sought grade changes from their course instructors and the chairmen of the departments in which the courses were offered.
Finally, the board would hear only grade complaints when instructors had allegedly failed to adhere to the course requirements. They were patched at the beginning of the semester.
The proposal will go before the University Senate at a special meeting April 17. The council also made provisions for a mail ballot on the proposal if a quorum is not achieved at the Senate meeting.
The University Senate, which comprises 1,224 faculty and administrators and 65 Student Senate members, has not had a quorum since 1971.
If the proposal is approved by the Senate, it still must be approved by Chancellor Budig. The concept of a grade appeals board has been studied by University governance groups for about two years.
James Seaver, chairman of the council, said, "It's perfectly possible that we could have a grade appeals board next fall if everything goes smoothly."
JAMES CAROTHERS, chairman of the University Senate Executive Committee, and other council members expressed concern that Senate members might oppose the proposal if they didn't understand it.
He said that he had received many letters and telephone calls from faculty members who were afraid every grade they assigned would be appealed. But, he said, the proposal approved by the council yesterday was narrow enough that the appeals board would not be flooded with grade complaints.
"I've heard a lot of apprehension — more than on any topic we've considered this year — because they haven't seen the proposal," Carothers said.
"If the proposal is understood by the University Senate, given the spirit and the specifies with which it passed the University Council, it will be passed," Carothers said. "Otherwise it will go down in flames.
"Everyone is involved in the grading procedure. Professors assign grades. Students receive grades. It is an inexact science. Any changes in the methods by which we assign grades will be viewed with reluctance or alarm by many people."
Larry Weaver/KANSAN
Senate allows four accused of bias to stay
Spring's sunny skies are finally brightening Kansas. Billy Ebeling, left, of Laverne, Okla., took advantage of yesterday's fair weather to entertain students with original folk songs in front of Wesco Hall. Tom Okay, above, Lawrence junior, guides his homemade remote-control sailboat Jayhawk I on Potter Lake. Forecasters for the National Weather Service in Topeka yesterday were predicting sunny skies and warm weather today, with a high near 70. Tomorrow's forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies, with a chance for showers and a high in the 50s.
By CINDY HOLM
Staff Reporter
Responding to arguments for freedom of speech, the Student Senate last night voted to allow four members of the Senate Finance Committee who had been accused of discrimination to remain on the committee.
The Senate's 28-6-3 vote was greeted with applause from senators and shouting from a gallery of about 60 observers.
"The system is a fraud. People you are all hypocrites," shouted Shafer, a member of the Free Speech Movement who bought the accusations against the men.
THE SENATE CONSIDERED a bill sponsored by Carla Vogel, student body president, that called for the Senate to remove Steve Bergstrom, Eric Wynkoop, Jay Smith and Bob Stern from the Finance Committee because of their association with the Freedom Coalition in last fall's Senate election and alledged discriminatory practices during budget hearings.
After the meeting, Vogel told senators that she had not expected the bill to pass but had sponsored it because he warranted the issue warranted discussion
"Issues like this need to be discussed," she said, "not lost in the bureaucracy."
Members of Praxis, Latin America,
Solidarity, and Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas Wednesday asked the Student Senate Executive Committee to recommend that the Senate remove the men from the committee.
StudEx voted 5-4 against such a recommendation but called an emergency Senate meeting to consider the issue.
RUTH LICHTWARDT, president of GLSKO, said last night that the four members had discriminated against GLSKO by asking questions unrelated
By United Press International
Senate passes Salvadoran aid
By a 76-19 vote, the Senate approved $62 million in emergency aid for El Salvador and $21 million to back a right-wing revolution in Nicaragua.
WASHINGTON — The Senate yesterday gave President Reagan what he wanted for Central America.
The Senate also rejected a pair of key amendments that would have required the approval of the bill.
"The Senate has voted for wider war in El Salvador, secret war in Nicaragua, and the brink of war in Iraq," said Mr. Browning who fought the measure for two weeks.
and Honduras.
THE PROPOSAL NOW goes to the House, which is likely to oppose many of the amendments and seek a House-Senate conference to work out the
The aid was part of a catch-all bill that started out as a measure to provide
rtegan has repeatedly told Congress that U.S. aid to Nicaragua insurgents was intended only to discourage Nicaragua from helping leftist guerrillas in neighboring countries such as
The Senate defeated, 51-44, an amendment by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that would have barred aid to any group trying to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist government.
aid to drought-strenken African nations
See AID, p. 5, col. 5
See SENATE, p. 5, col. 1
Legislature leaves many loose ends
By ROB KARWATH and LORI DODGE Staff Reporters
TOPEKA — The Kansas Legislature adjourned for two weeks of vacation yesterday having resolved only a handful of key issues in 63 workdays and hoping to deal with at least twice as many when the legislators return for a short wrap-up session.
During those 63 days, expressions on tomahawk faces have changed as often the island has.
Brows have wrinkled with concentration over such complex issues as how to curb the electricity rate shock expected to be caused by the Wolf
ANALYSIS
Creek nuclear plant. And faces have beamed over more lighthearted matters such as whether the figure of a Roman goddess should adorn the Capitol's dome.
THE LEGISLATURE IS scheduled to return April 25, probably for three days
of final work. The second session is designed for the lawmakers to reconsider any legislation vetoed by Gov. John Carlin and to clean up any measures not dealt with during the first session.
session.
But the majority of the legislators' time probably will be spent with the latter.
The key issues that legislators already have ushered into Gov. John Carlin's office include bills to finance the state's secondary schools and
See ANAYLSIS, p. 5, col. 3
AURH leader presents hall visitation policy
By TODD NELSON Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
The president of the Association of University Residence Halls last night unveiled a counterproposal to a policy drafted by KU officials that would prohibit KU students from having overnight guests of the opposite sex in their residence hall rooms.
Under the proposal, introduced by James Jeffery, the president, residents would still be able to have such guests with their roommates' consent, but they would have to sign a form taking responsibility for their guests' actions.
Residents who violated the visitation policy would receive warnings the first two times. After that, they could be placed on probation, moved to another room or hall, or expelled from the residence hall system.
JEFFLEY SAID. "You either accept the administration's policy or you take a little bit more responsibility."
Although his proposal would make it more difficult to have guests of the opposite sex in a residence hall room during security hours, Jeffey said, the initial visitation policy change proposed by the Residential Programs Advisory Board offers no flexibility.
Last week, RPAB delayed action on a proposal that would prohibit such guests until Jefiffy submitted his counterproposal. Jefiffy will present his proposal to RPAB at its meeting Thursday.
More than 2,800 residents have signed a petition that Jeffley placed in the halls against the initial proposal.
Jeffley first presented his draft of the compromise proposal to the AURH Housing and Contracts Committee last night. That committee tabled the proposal until a special meeting scheduled for Monday because committee members wanted more time to discuss it.
THE AURH GENERAL assembly last night authorized Jeffley to present a draft of his proposal.
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