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MONDAY NOVEMBER 14:2011
RAP FROM PAGE 1A
With more people than ever before writing poems and fewer reading them, he said, rap is at least one way that people are exposed to poetry.
John Dillingham, a freshman from Houston, said he appreciated the University providing a forum for something that students really like. The message he took away from the lecture, he said, was "keep being active in what you feel passionate about."
Kenton Ramsby, a graduate student in English, was on the panel Thursday and is active in the study of hip-hop and literature. He
works with the Project on the History of Black Writing, an archival project that began in 1983 at the University of Mississippi. Initially devoted to collecting and preserving novels written by black people, the project has expanded to study black music, art and the politics of protest.
POP CULTURE PANEL
Rambsy and other bloggers on the project's website hope to legitimize rap music and make it a subject for serious literary criticism.
"Even though this music is good, to listen to in the clubs, we also want to appreciate the artistry of it," he said.
Edited by Laura Nightengale
The panel Thursday night included Nicole Hodges Persley, assistant professor of theatre, Glenn North, poet-in-residence at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Mo. Howard Rambsy II, associate professor of literature and director of the Black Studies Program at Southern Illinois University, and Kenton Rambsy, Anthony Bolden, an associate professor of African and African-American Studies, helped organize the event and has taught courses on hip hop at the University.
Hodges Persley teaches Hip Hop in Popular Culture each spring, but her class is full
with a waiting list, she wrote in an email
To learn more about courses in African and African-American Studies, visit: http://afs.ku.edu/
To learn more about courses in the Department of Theatre, visit: http://www.theatre. ku.edu/
To learn more about the Project on the History of Black Writing, visit: http://www.
hbw.ku.edu/about_us.html
Mexican president's sister vies for governorship
MORELIA, Mexico (AP) Mexicans voted in the western state of Michoacan in a crucial political test Sunday for President Felipe Calderon in his home state, where his sister sought the governor's post.
WORLD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Voters also were electing 40 federal congressional representatives and 112 mayors following dozens of drug cartel-related attacks over the last two years targeting local officials in the state.
The vote count was going very slowly Sunday night. With less than less than 4 percent of the polling stations reporting, the governor's race was a dead heat.
The election was being watched as an indicator for Mexico's presidential election next year, for which opinion polls have been indicating that Calderon's conservative National Action Party, or PAN, will struggle to retain the presidency.
The vote results also would reflect more clearly on the president,
Luisa Maria Calderon promised to advance her brother's antidrug campaign and led in most opinion polls going into the vote, the last state election before the presidential contest in July. A victory would boost the morale of the PAN, which has held the presidency since 2000 but has been hurt recently by voter fatigue over drug violence.
whose sister, Luisa Maria "Cocoa" Calderon, ran for the governorship in the family's home state where the president launched his offensive against drug cartels in late 2006.
Such violence has been a main concern in Michoacan and many people feared it could disrupt Sunday's vote.
Jesus Zambrano Grijalvo, president of the leftist Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, said his party sympathizers in a mountainous zone plagued by drug violence were being intimidated by organized crime gangs and pressured not to vote. Zambrano did not go into details at a news conference
Sunday.
Residents of the rural city of Cheran refused to let poll workers into their town amid demands for an election that they said would respect their customs and traditions. The indigenous Purepecha people who live in Cheran have in recent months wielded rifles and mounted roadblocks keeping out suspected illegal loggers and drug traffickers.
The Michoacan Electoral Institute said in a news release Sunday that officials were still unable to carry out elections in Cheran and were determining how the 16,000 residents there will elect their leaders. Voting continued elsewhere in the state, despite the problems in Cheran.
In the city of La Piedad, a local newspaper published on Sunday an unsigned note blaming the PAN for drug killings and threatening the party's supporters. News reports said the newspaper had been forced to publish the warning.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
"Don't wear T-shirts or PAN
advertising because we don't want to confuse you and have innocent people die," read the note, which was also circulated by email.
It was not immediately clear who sent the email or published the newspaper ad, which came 11 days after La Piedad Mayor Ricardo Guzman was shot dead while handing out leaflets for several PAN candidates, including Luisa Martia Calderon. No arrests have been made in the attack.
Twitter users claiming to belong to the "Anonymous" hackers movement said they were behind an attack on the website of a party backing Luisa Maria Calderon. The tweets also said hackers attacked the Michoacan Electoral Institute's website, the site where election results are announced and which had been down for hours.
The PAN has yet to win a governorship in Michoacan, and the PRD has dominated federal offices and the presidential vote there since 2000. Local offices have been a toss-up between the PRD and the Institutional Revolutionary
Partv. or PRI.
Calderon faced PRD candidate Silvano Aureoles Conejo and Morelia Mayor Fausto Vallejo Figueroa of the PRI.
The PRI sought a victory in Michaocan to build momentum for regaining the presidency, which it lost to the PAN in 2000 after 71 years of single-party rule. The PRI so far is fielding the most popular pre-candidate in the presidential race, former Mexico state Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto.
"Whoever wins, their party will claim it helps for 2012, especially the current underdogs — PAN and PRD," said Shannon O'Neil, a Latin America expert for the U.S.-based think tank the Council on Foreign Relations.
The once-dominant PRD trailed the other two major parties in the Michoacan governor's race, according to opinion polls. As Michoacan's governing party for a decade, the PRD drew criticism for the state's drug violence.
NATIONAL
POLICY FROM PAGE 1A
of children. Failure to report according to the state law is a class B misdemeanor.
Martin wrote in an email that the law applies only to primary and secondary schools.
"But beyond the responsibilities that come from law or policy, the Chancellor also wanted to emphasize the moral obligation we each have," Martin wrote. "Especially when it comes to protecting children."
Coach Turner Gill addressed questions about KU Athletics policy during a press conference Tuesday. He said athletics department policy requires reporting of misconduct to department authorities.
"We have a list with phone numbers of everybody in our athletics department and there is a protocol that we explain to our players and staff," he said. "Whatever you do, all I ask you to do is to promise me that you don't isolate yourself."
Edited by Jayson Jenks
The University is also subject to the federal Clery Act, which requires an annual statistical report of several categories of crime, including sex offenses, liquor law violations and drug and weapons violations.
NATIONAL
Ohio explosion leaves one missing
ASSOCIATED PRESS
FAIRBORN, Ohio (AP) — A house exploded in western Ohio on Saturday, sending six people, including three young children, to hospitals with burns and leaving one person missing, officials said.
Work was being done on the duplex's water line when the gas line was struck and ruptured, causing the explosion, Fairborn Fire Marshal Carl Day said. It is unclear whether anyone died in the blast. Investigators were still piecing together how many people lived in the duplex and where they were when the explosion occurred.
The house was demolished,
throwing debris and the victims
— including an infant — into the yard. Hours later, crews were still searching the rubble for the unaccounted person, believed to be an older man, Day said.
Neighbor Cybil Poole told the Dayton Daily News (http://bit.ly/rJOh4f) that the explosion, which occurred 100 meters from her house, felt like a car hitting it. She said she saw the infant was burned, bloodied and covered in glass, and some of the other victims were still on fire.
"It was horrible. It was like a movie scene. You see this huge fireball and you see people come out of it on fire," she said. "If everybody made it out of there alive, it's truly a blessing."
Another neighbor, Paula Corelli, told the newspaper that she was almost hit by a flying piece of wood from the explosion. When she saw two adults running down the sidewalk carrying three bloodied children, she offered to take them while the adults returned to the scene.
"Medics told me to keep them awake because they had head injuries, so we sang to them, me and another woman," Corelli said. "And we didn't let them look back. It was still on fire and there was a lot of blood."
Some of the victims were airlifted to hospitals.
Day said four juveniles were among the injured: three children, ages 1, 3 and 5, as well as a teenager.
They were taken to Dayton Children's Medical Center, where the infant was listed in critical condition. Another child was still being examined, while two were expected to be treated and released, spokesman Terry Fink said.
The adult victims were taken to Miami Valley Hospital, where a supervisor declined to describe the extent of their injuries, citing privacy laws.