CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, November 5. 1992
3
Senate OKs funds amid heated debate
By Stacy Morford
Kansan staff writer
Once again, Student Senate voted to finance every group that asked it for money last night, but not before its members slashed almost by half the requests of two cultural groups and spent 20 minutes arguing about Christmas movies.
The Pakistan Club and the Malaysian Club each sought more than $1,000 from the finance committee last week to put on cultural events filled with the dances, dramas and songs of their members' homelands.
But the senators only allocated to the Malaysian Club $587.34 of the $850 agreed to by the committee. The Pakistan Club's $1,154 bill was cut to $834. Mohsin Mohammad, the club's president, said it would cost more than three times that amount to sponsor the two events he had planned.
"I think there's a lot of concern that we are giving big hunks of money to these small-impact groups," said Kevin Jennings, cultural affairs chairperson. "We don't understand their history or fully understand what they're doing because we have not experienced it, but we pass them because they're minority affairs."
The Chinese Student Association, considered by Senate to be an umbrella group for several Asian clubs, was allocated $209 in less than two minutes of discussion and
debate.
The night's most ferocious debate was incited by Jason McIntosh, liberal arts and sciences Senator. McIntosh demanded that the black-and-white version of "It's a Wonderful Life" replace SUA's choice of "Miracle on 34th Street" as one of the free movies during finals week.
The senators barely defeated the amendment to replace "Miracle on 34th Street," 21 to 18.
In other business the KU Genetics Society was allocated $109 for general business, and the KU Space Program was allocated $300 to purchase parts for an experiment that would be sent into space on the next space shuttle flight.
State Senator-elect Sandy Praeger and state Representative-elect Barbara Ballard thanked students for helping and supporting them in their recent campaigns, and congratulated Associated Students of Kansas for its voter registration efforts.
Also, John Shoemaker, student rights committee chairperson, announced that he had received calls from every presidential campaign but President Bush's, acknowledging that the candidates had received the student rights committee-generated request that the next president consider allowing each state to decide its own legal drinking age. Not one of the campaigns made a commitment to act on the request.
KU composting makes dirt of leaves
By Christine Laue
Kansan staff writer
The dead leaves slowly swing downward to the cold fall ground.
Irene Lanier / KANSAN
Don't be sad for them. They may have died, but thanks to a process called composting, tons of leaves this year on the KU campus and in Lawrence will be resuscitated in the form of rich soil.
James Craig (left) and Don Reed, both of Lawrence and facilities and operations employees,
use a new machine to suck up leaves on campus.
Employees of KU's facilities operations are adding to the University's compost pile, as the leaf-gathering season hits full-swing. But everybody can join in the environmentally sound activity, said Sue Ask, associate environmental ambassador.
"Composting is basically really easy." Ask said. "It doesn't take a lot of work."
Composting is the process of turning organic material that normally is thrown away into a rich fertilizer. A person composting only has to toss organic materials onto the pile and turn periodically, depending on the size of the pile.
In a compost heap, billions of organisms break the organic wastes down into the forms that can be best used by plants. The finished compost will add nutrients and humus to the soil, improving its texture and increasing its ability to hold air and water.
Ask said students could compost by either asking their landlord for permission to compost on apartment grounds or by taking their material to a neighbor or friend who complements their dormitory dwellers even can buy buckets of worms, which aid in the composting process.
Patricia Marvin, recycling coordinator for the city of Lawrence, said students also could take compostable material to drop-off sites at Centennial Park, off Rockledge Road, and the east entrance of the North
Those areas are part of a pilot program by the city. Marvin said that in its first year and a half, the program helped to reduce the amount of grass and leaves going to the landfill by 400 to 600 tons. About 35 percent to 40 percent of the residential trash generated in Lawrence was compostable.
Lawrence train depot, at North Third Street. Anyone living west of Iowa Street or south of 23rd Street can put their leaves and other compostable material in garbage bags and set them on street corners for city pick-up on Wednesday.
The curbside program will go city-wide this spring.
Sue Dalton, co-owner of Simple Goods, 735 Massachusetts St., said more people are getting interested in composting. The store sells a compost bin made of recycled cardboard for $14, but bins can cost up to $100, Dalton said.
Stephen Helsel, associate director of facilities operations, said the bin used by the University measures 130 feet long, 20 feet wide and 6 feet tall.
All the dead leaves and grass clippings on campus are taken to the University's bin. Helsel said about 65 percent to 70 percent of the leaves on campus trees had fallen already.
Story of Peltier's conviction draws support for release
Holly McQueen / KANSAN
Lisa Farufo of Lawrence writes a letter to the President-elect Bill Clinton asking him for his involvement in Leonard Peltier's case. Farufo, recently engaged to
Continued from Page 1.
Peltier, walks alone down the cold, gray, limestone steps leading into the parking lot.
"Everytime I leave, I think the same thing." Farulo, 25, says. "When the hell am I going to walk down these steps with him?"
Peltier, who is 48, makes Farulo wait inside the penitentiary until he can climb the stairs to his cell to watch her leave.
"When I drive away, I wave to the building," she says, wiping her long black hair from her face. "I always hope he can see me waving."
deeper.
--can Indian Movement in the early 1970s and participated in armed takeovers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C., and the small town of Wounded Knee, S.D. Pelier, like the rest of AIM, felt that armed resistance was the only way American Indians could bring attention to the poverty and despair they faced.
Five years ago Lisa Farulo rea* book that changed her life. The book, "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" by Peter Mathiessen, is a detailed account of the Leonard Pellet case.
"When I first read the book, "thought the case was such an injustice," she says from her home in West Lawrence that serves as the international headquarters for the Leonard Pellet Defense Committee. "I mean, I'm an Italian from New York, why should I care about some Indian? But the case got to me. I thought if constitutional rights mean anything in this country, this guy needs a new trial."
Farulo, who was attending college in New York, wrote to Pelitzer in jail, and alove affair was born.
"Leonard and I were very close even when I was in New Jersey," she says. "He would call all the time, and my family loved him."
A year and a halo ago, Farulo and a college friend, Michelle Vignola, decided to take over the Defense Committee in Lawrence. Vignolaasys did not sleep at all the night before she met Pelletier for the first time.
"She tossed and turned all night before she met him," Vignola says, laughing.
With biweekly visits and plenty of phone calls, the friendship grew
"I started to realize Leonard wanted my soul," Farulo says. "Things got heavier. We both had to admit to each other that this was a lot more than a friendship."
Last December, while Farulo was in New York for Christmas, Leonard Pelter called and asked her what she would do if he asked her to marry him.
"He first made it real clear that if it came down to revealing the identity of Mr. X or staying in jail, he said he'd be ashamed." The lawyer asked me what I would do, I said yes."
It took a few months for Farulo's family to finally accept the idea of marrying Peltier.
"Growing up in Staten Island, I had it all worked out. I was gonna marry Robert Plant," she says, flashing a quick smile. "And my mom had it all set up; I was gonna marry some Italian doctor or lawyer. And then this..."
--can Indian Movement in the early 1970s and participated in armed takeovers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C., and the small town of Wounded Knee, S.D. Pelier, like the rest of AIM, felt that armed resistance was the only way American Indians could bring attention to the poverty and despair they faced.
Meeting Leonard Peltier, the word "killer" does not come to mind. Peltier, a short, squat man with long, dark hair and a bushy black mustache with a twist of gray, hardly seems to be the confrontational bully the FBI has made him out to be.
Dressed in a light brown jumpsuits, Peltier appears nervous as a prison official watches the interview from a desk. He speaks slowly and quietly and laughs quickly. Peltier's broad smile fades when he talks about the racism he faced growing up in the West.
"I worked near the Navajo reservation in Arizona for a while," he says, relaxing more as he begins to talk. "I can remember looking out the window of the hotel I was staying in and watching Indians being beaten by groups of people; sometimes the police. I remember one case where a 14-year-old Indian boy was beaten to death by an iron worker. The guy got off with a $2,000 fine."
Disenchanted by what he saw around him, Peltier joined the American Indian Movement in the early 1970s and participated in armed takeovers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington, D.C., and the small town of Wounded Knee, S.D. Pelier, like the rest of AIM, felt that armed resistance was the only way American Indians could bring attention to the poverty and despair they faced.
"All of us in the American Indian Movement were at a point in our lives where there wasn't much hope," he says. "We knew we'd all end up on Skid Row or back on a reservation unemployed. It was bleak. We were gonna die. We felt like we might as well die for our people."
During the last 16 years, Leonard Peltier has sometimes wished he would die. But more than 50 support groups located throughout the world keep him alive. And the four hours he spends with Farulo each week keep him going.
"She has helped me so much," he says. "I kind of gave up after my last appeal in 'S5. But she changed me."
Since Parulo moved to Lawrence, Peltier has quit smoking and now stays in shape. He laughingly brags of beating younger inmates on the handball court in Leavenworth.
"When you're in prison, you miss the human contact," he says. "It's real isolated in here. People are afraid to touch each other. Before she came, I was a nurse and had contact. Just having her sit and hear you help, that really helps. It does a lot for me."
Peltier laughs again when asked about his marriage proposal. After Farulo accepted, he told his relatives she was part American Indian.
"My friend told me to tell them she was an indigenous Italian," he says. "But now they know, and they don't really care. They're happy for me."
--throughout the world. About 17 million citizens of the former Soviet Union signed a petition asking for his release, and Mikhail Gorbachev often referred to Peltier as a political prisoner. Fifty-five members of Congress have signed a brief requesting a new trial.
Lisa Farulo's fiance is known
And Leonard Peltier's case touches a deep nerve in many American Indians, who see Peltier as a symbol of the federal government's attempt to destroy their people. Tribal governments on 20 American Indian reservations have petitioned the U.S. government to release Peltier.
"Leonard is a key to the door that might open up a whole new era," Farulo says. "He is a symbol of the government's attempt to quiet Indian dissent. If he were freed, then we can start talking about treaty rights and sovereignty. With him free, people would feel like they could organize and argue without having a gun at their head."
For Farulo and Vignola, the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee is an obsession. And with the new appeal approaching, life at committee headquarters is more than hectic. The dining room table is a sea of documents. The telephone rings from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. As Farulo comes in with the day's mail, a large woven bag overflowing with envelopes and packages, Vignola runs a hand through her long blond hair and sighs.
"This is our life," she says. "This is a 24-hour-a-day job. It starts at 8 in the morning and goes until midnight every day."
Farulo nods and adds, "Michelle and I are thinking about making a T-shirt 'Free Leonard Peltier - We can't take this emotionally."
The committee, which is financed entirely through donations from around the world, sends bimonthly newsletters throughout the world, stores most of the legal documents of the case in the committee's garage and helps Pelier's lawyers in any way they can.
Leonard Peltier's case haunts the
members of the committee.
Michael Noll, a KU teaching assistant in geography and member of the committee, said the Peltier case had become a crusade.
"The more involved you get, the more you know about the case, the more personal it becomes," he says. "It's not just a fight for Leonard, it's a fight for what you believe in. You become absolutely involved, you start dreaming about it."
And with the recent success of "Incident at Ogala," a documentary film about Peltier's case produced by Robert Redford, and interviews in magazines ranging from Vogue to People, those involved in Peltier's case think 1992 might be the year Leonard Peltier comes home.
While talking about Petiet's case, Noll pauses and says sofyl, "If we can't get him out this time, I don't know that we ever will."
--announces that applications are now available for the fifth year of the Educational Opportunity Fund
Lisa Farulo wears two identical rings. One on her ring finger; the other dangles on a necklace around her neck. Leonard Peltier cannot wear it in prison. The rings, made of gold with inserts of turquoise, were made for the couple by an American Indian artist in New Mexico.
Farulo's voice is full of hope when she speaks of life with Peltier outside of prison.
"When he gets out, we're gonna take a month or two just to be together," she says. Then she pauses, grinning.
"And we're going to Disneyworld."
Farulo doesn't like to think about the possibility of marrying a man who may spend the rest of his life in prison.
"If I can't get him out this time, I guess I'll be doing this forever," she says.
Until Nov. 9, many throughout the world will wait and hope for Leonard Pellier's release.
And Lisa Farulo will hope she has a husband at her side for Christmas.
STUDENT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SENATE
All departments, units,and organizations of the University are eligible to apply. Applications and accompanying materials may be picked up at the Student Senate office, 410 Kansas Union or at the Financial Aid office, 26 Strong Hall.
Submission of application and accompanying material must be received no later than 5:00 p.m., on November 9. 1992, at the Student Senate Office.
All grants are for the 1993-1994 academic year. Any Questions? Call the Student Senate office at 864-3710
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