THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2008
NEWS
3A
PHILANTHROPY
University nears donation goal for local charity
BY SACHIKO MIYAKAWA
smiyakawa@kansan.com
Every week, 9-year-old Aidan Easley benefits from donations made to United Way. He was matched with two Big Brothers in July, and they have done anything from going to a pumpkin patch for Halloween, playing video games or hanging out at a downtown coffee shop.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Douglas County receives money from United Way of Douglas County's annual fund-raising campaign. The University also holds the 2008 KU United Way campaign, which raised $197,000 since it launched in October, said Kelly Stazyk, KU Bookstores marketing coordinator and member of the KU United Way campaign committee.
Aidan's mother, Molly Easley, Kansas City, Kan., graduate student, said she applied for Big Brothers
Big Sisters of Douglas County to give Aidan an opportunity to spend time with an older male.
"I think the program fosters his self-esteem. He can hang out with somebody who he thinks is cool." Easley said. "He looks at them as his role models."
United Way of Douglas County has pooled and provided resources for local charitable organizations since it was formed in 1941, when it was known as the Community Chest. Erika Dvorske, president and CEO of United Way of Douglas County, said the University had been involved in the organization from the beginning. She said this year the Douglas County campaign set a goal to raise $1.72 million, asking for donations from local companies, school districts and individuals. She said the University's campaign was one of the largest contributors.
Stazyk said the goal of the 2008
KU campaign was to raise $248,000 and increase the number of donors from last year. Strayk said the campaign asked for donations from staff and faculty because most students didn't have the financial resources to contribute. As of Nov. 6, the campaign has raised 80 percent of its goal, she said.
Colleen Gregoire, vice president and campaign manager of United Way Douglas County, said a successful United Way campaign would make a stronger and healthier community. It would also benefit some KU students, such as Molly Easley, through local charitable organizations.
Gregoire said the success of the United Way campaign meant there were agencies that could serve the needs of those students. The United Way campaign supports scholarships for childcare, counseling from headquarters when life gets too stressful and educational opportunities through the Red Cross, among other things, she said.
Easley said she works on her homework while Aiden spends time with his Big Brothers. She said that 30 years ago it would have been almost impossible for a woman to raise a child and go to school, but society today had become more open to students like her.
"Even though it's difficult to both raise a child and be a student, it gives me an opportunity to set an example," she said.
Donations for the United Way campaign can be pledged through the Web site, unitedwaydco.org, through causes listed on Facebook, such as the United Way of Douglas County Cause, or by calling United Way of Douglas County at (785) 843-6626.
- Edited by Ramsey Cox
United Way University Campaign
GOAL
248,000
The University has raised 80 percent of its donation goal for the United Way of Douglas County
Allison Richardson/KANSAN
INTERNATIONAL
Italian military tries to take down the Naples Godfather
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CASAL DI PRINCIPE, Italy — The paratroopers' armored vehicles had barely taken up position in this fiefdom of the Casalesi crime clan when the mobsters decided to show them who was boss.
On a sleepy Sunday, a few hundred yards from where the crack Thunderbolt brigade was deployed with automatic rifles, two gunmen drove down the town's main street and pumped bullets into a 60-year-old man at a table just inside the entrance of a card parlor.
The murder of an uncle of a crime syndicate turncoat left blood oozing across the stone sidewalk and a collective silence by potential witnesses among fellow card players, prompting a wry comment that the victim must have been playing solitaire.
After dealing blows that left Sicily's Costa Nostra reeling and making inroads against Calabria's potent 'ndrangheta syndicate, Italy's new war against organized crime is challenging the Camorra, the Naples regional mafia depicted in a film just released in the U.S., after the mob carried out a brutal, months-long murder spree that included gunning down six Ghanaian immigrants in one swoop.
In recent months, the government has sent 3,000 soldiers into other cities across Italy to help battle crime syndicates. Now it has poured 500 soldiers and 400 police investigators into the region northwest of Naples, with most patrolling the flat, bleak, provincial countryside that is under the sway of the Casalesi, so named for its stronghold here in the town of Casal di Principe.
The deployment is set to last until December and could be extended if violence persists. Using the military against criminals is not new—it has been done in Naples and Sicily—but the theory still stands that sending in troops can free up local police who know the territory to intensify the search for clues and suspects.
However, as shown by the brazen murder of the card player on Oct. 5, the Camorra is proving a fiercely tenacious enemy.
"They are not in decline. They are very strong economically," said magistrate Franco Roberti, who heads a team of anti-mob prosecutors in Naples.
The Camorra runs lucrative rackets ranging from numbers games to horse race betting, drugs and smuggling immigrants. The Casalesi are also involved in illegal transport and disposal of tons
of toxic waste from the industrial north to the underdeveloped south, according to a report by a parliamentary anti-Maffia commission.
But the Camorra, and in particular the Casalesi, thrive mainly on extorting "protection" money from a terrorized citizenry.
"You kill one to teach a lesson to 100," is how Rodolfo Ruperti, a police official in the provincial capital of Caserta, describes the thinking behind a murder spree blamed on the Casalesti, which has claimed at least 18 lives since spring.
Investigators described the massacre of the Africans as an intimidating show of firepower, possibly meant to signal Nigerian drug traffickers to stop operating in Casaliess territory. The attackers sprayed a hail of bullets at the immigrants chatting outside a social club.
Victims have included relatives of turncoats, a few rare businessmen who dared refuse extortion demands and, last month, six immigrants in the nearby town of Castel Volturno.
Ruperti said in an interview that investigators believe the driving force behind the orgy of bloodshed is Giuseppe Setola, a sharp-shooting fugitive mobster who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in the past.
Setola is waging a "strategy of terror." Ruperti said. "He needs to use sheer power" to win command of the Casalesi clan since he lacks the charisma of imprisoned clan boss Francesco Schiavone.
Schiavone, known as Sandokan after the hero of a series of pirate adventure books popular in Italy, is believed to rule the Casalesi despite being behind bars for years. Schiavones wife was arrested as an
alleged clan paymaster in one of the recent police raids that have netted dozens of suspected Camorra members.
A manhunt is on for Setola, who escaped in spring from house arrest, granted so he could recover from an eye problem. "His eyes can't be so bad." Ruperti commented drily — since Setola is believed to have carried out some of the recent killings himself.
The arrests of Camorra suspects have dealt a severe blow to the syndicate, but it keeps finding ways to renew itself. "There are always new recruits, because more than being a criminal phenomenon, the Camorra is a social phenomenon," Roberta said.
Potential mobsters are tempted by the mob's quick money in bleak towns like Casal di Principe, where most of the young are unemployed.