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THE UNIVERSITY HALL KANSAS
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2008
NEWS
3A
VOTING (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
of this election would change the direction of the country.
"The past eight years haven't worked out the way people had hoped for them to in 2000," she said. "We're in a ridiculously horrible economic crisis and two wars. I think that's why people want to see change in Washington."
Ryan Lawler, Bolingbrook Ill., senior and community affairs director for the Student Legislative Awareness Board, said although students' political allegiances were likely to play a huge role in this election. students would vote for the candidate they thought would be most effective.
gled them to stick to certain ideologies and viewpoints of the party," he said.
"The more extreme you get to either side, the more you're expect-
Lawler,
who voted
for U.S. Sen.
John McCain
(R-Ariz.), said
many people in his
home state of Illinois
the time or interest to pay attention to multiple media outlets.
"The more extreme you get to either side,the more you're expecting them to stick to certain ideologies and viewpoints of the party."
"When you pull information from multiple sources, you get a well-rounded perspective," he said.
Although Obama would get his vote, Gray said either candidate would do a fantastic job. He said McCain's years of experience in both the U.S. House and Senate were invaluable.
For many others, though, it comes down to the issues they care about and where they think each candidate stands.
"When it comes down to it, I just think Obama would do a little bit better," he said. "But it's going to be close."
felt allegiance to U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-III.). Lawler said either president would do a fine job in the oval office.
"Even though I'm not voting for him, I can respect where he's come from or what he's done," he said.
Aly Rodee, Wichita senior and
RYAN LAWLER SLAB Community Affairs Director
Lawler said a divided government, where no single party controlled both Congress and the White House, would produce the best results for the country because it forced parties to compromise. He said although many claimed that Republicans had spun the country out of control, the Democrats were just as out of control as they were in 2000.
student senator, said the economy was most important to her because she would be looking for a job after graduation in May. She said she liked McCain's economic policy
A plethora of mud-sllinging campaign ads have overwhelmed TV channels for months now.
"I'm always in favor of divided government and keeping checks and balances on the government," he said.
Michael Gray, Buhler junior, said he thought some students would make decisions with the ads in mind because most didn't have
because she trusted his experience and agreed with returning the control of government to the people.
"Someone that knows what's going on and can work on both sides with people to get something accomplished is important to me," Rodee said.
She said although the economic woes affected everyone who voted, many students would vote for the candidate they could identify with and trust the most.
Rodee said she was concerned that negative campaign ads played too large a role in the way students voted. She said McCain's campaign had struggled to emphasize one concept among its many mentions of "maverick" and "country first", but Obama had successfully communicated a singular message of "change."
"People relate to that because people want to see change," she said. "But I think it will be close. I'm excited to see the spectacle of it all."
Edited by Jennifer Torline
'Cornerstone' of Obama's family dies
OBITUARY
HERBERT A. SAMPLE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HONOLULU — Sen. Barack Obama's grandmother died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.
Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya SoetoroNg said Dunham died peacefully late Sunday night after a battle with cancer.
They said: "She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances."
Obama learned of her death Monday morning while campaigning in Jacksonville, Fla. He planned to go ahead with campaign appearances. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.
Republican John McCain issued condolences to his opponent. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives," the statement by John and Cindy McCain said.
Last month, Obama took a break from campaigning and flew to Hawaii to be with Dunham as her health declined.
Outside the apartment building where Dunham died, reporters and TV cameras lined the sidewalk as two police officers were posted near the elevator. Signs hanging in the apartment lobby warned the public to keep out.
Obama said the decision to go to Hawaii was easy to make, telling CBS that he "got there too late" when his mother died of ovarian cancer in 1995 at 53, and wanted to make sure "that I don't make the same mistake twice."
"So many of us were hoping and praying that his grandmother
Longtime family friend Georgia McCauley visited the 10th-floor apartment where Obama had lived with his grandparent.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
would have the opportunity to witness her grandson become our next president," said state Rep. Marcus Oshiro, an Obama supporter.
The Kansas-born Dunham and her husband, Stanley, raised their grandson for several years so he could attend school in Honolulu while their daughter and her second husband lived overseas. Her influence on Obama's manner and the way he viewed the world was substantial, the candidate said at his convention in Denver in August.
"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."
Barack Obama embraces his grandmother Madelyn Payne Dunham during his 1979 high school graduation in Hawaii with his grandmother. The Illinois senator and Democratic presidential nominee's grandmother died Sunday night in her Hawaii apartment after a battle with cancer.
Obama's nickname for his grandmother was "Toot," a version of the Hawaiian word for grandmother, tutu. Many of his speeches describe her working on a bomber assembly line during World War II.
Madelyn and Stanley Dunham married in 1940, a few weeks before she graduated from high school. Their daughter, Stanley Ann, was born in 1942. After several moves to and from California, Texas, Washington and Kansas, Stanley Dunham's job landed the family in Hawaii.
It was there that Stanley Ann later met and fell in love with Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama Sr. They had met in Russian class at the University of Hawaii. Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last long. She later married an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro, another university student she met in Hawaii.
Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and stepfather at age 6. But in 1971, her mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. He stayed with the Dunhams until he graduated from high school in 1979.
After her health took a turn for the worse, her brother said on Oct. 21 that she had already lived long
enough to see her "Barry" achieve what shed wanted for him.
"I think she thinks she was important in raising a fine young man," Charles Payne, 83, said in a brief telephone interview from his Chicago home.
Stanley Dunham died in 1992, while Obama's mother died in 1995. His father is also deceased.
When Obama was young, he and his grandmother toured the United States by Greyhour bus, stopping at the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Disneyland and Chicago, where Obama would years later settle.
It was an incident during his teenage years that became one of Obama's most vivid memories of Toot.
She had been aggressively panhandled by a man and she wanted her husband to take her to work. When Obama asked why, his grandfather said Madelyn Dunham was bothered because the panhandler was black.
The words hit the biracial
Obama "like a fist in my stomach," he wrote later. He was sure his grandparents loved him deeply. "And yet," he added, "I knew that men who might easily have been my brothers could still inspire their rawest fears."
Obama referred to the incident again when he addressed race in a speech in March during a controversy over his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother," he said.
Dunham was "a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world but who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her on the street."
Madelyn Lee Payne was born to Rolla and Leona Payne in October, 1922, in Peru, Kan., but Ivied much of her childhood in nearby Augusta.
She was the oldest of four children, and she loved to read everything from James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" to Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."
PAUL DAVIS A LEADER WHO LISTENS
State Representative Paul Davis works hard to represent KU interests at the State Capitol. He helped lead the fight for deferred maintenance monies to repair our crumbling classrooms and has been a strong advocate for holding down tuition costs. Paul's work was recognized by the Kansas Citizens for Higher Education, who gave him an "A" for his voting record on issues important to Kansas universities.
Lets send Paul back to Topeka to keep fighting for us!
INTERNATIONAL
U.N. helps refugees in Congo
BY MICHELLE FAUL ASSOCIATED PRESS
KIBATI, Congo — A U.N. aid convoy rumbled past rebel lines Monday for the first time since
fighting broke out in August in eastern Congo, carrying medical supplies for clinics looted by retreating government troops.
Shadowed by giant volcanoes,
U.N. peacekeepers escorted the 12
trucks on a crumbling road north from the provincial capital of Goma, to Rutshuru, a village seized by rebels 55 miles north of Goma.
Both the Congolese army and the rebel leader it has been battling assured the convoy's safe passage, said Gloria Fernandez, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in eastern Congo.
Medical supplies and tablets to purify water were the priority in this shipment, she said, adding that another convoy on Tuesday would be bringing food for some of the 250,000 refugees displaced by fighting in this central African nation. The U.N. Children's agency said 100,000 of those were displaced in the last week alone, and 60 percent of them were children.
Fernandez said health clinics north of Goma have been "looted and completely destroyed," leaving the Rutshuru hospital as the only operating medical facility in a region of hundreds of thousands of people.
Food, however, was the critical issue for most people.
"Everybody is hungry, everybody," said Jean Bizy, 25, a teacher, who watched with envy as the U.N. convoy stopped to deliver a sack of potatoes to U.N. troops in Rugari. Bizy said he has been surviving on wild bananas for days.
Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda went on the offensive Aug. 28 and brought his fighters to the edge of Goma last week before declaring a unilateral cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the United Nations announced that a Senegalese general who commanded Congo's 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force until October will take charge again following the sudden resignation of his successor.
Lt. Gen. Babacar Gaye will serve as commander of the U.N. force for up to six months to give Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon time to find a replacement for Lt. Gen. Vincente Diaz de Villagas of Spain, who resigned last week for personal reasons, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said.