6A NEWS
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY OCTOBER 13, 2009
CELEBRITY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A set of Elvis Pez dispensers, one of more than 200 items in The Gary Pepper Collection of Elvis Presley Memorabilia, is seen at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. The items will be up for auction Sunday.
Auction will include a clump of Presley's hair
BY DON BABWIN
Associated Press
CHICAGO — The King may be dead, but that doesn't mean it's too late to run your fingers through his hair.
Elvis Presley's hair, at least a clump of hair that Presley may have lost to an Army barber when he went into the service back in 1958, is going on the auction block this Sunday at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago.
The hair is part of a collection of more than 200 items that belonged to or are associated with Presley. There are clothes he
three to screaming fans — who judging by the yellow sweat stains, never washed them — and Christmas cards he sent. And there are lots of records, some he kept in
his own juke box, and other sorts of memorabilia ranging from Elvis dolls to Elvius wrist watches to Elvius Pez dispensers.
...a few years back some of Presley's hair that had been collected by his barber was put up for bid and sold for $115,000.
But it is clearly the hair that has generated the most buzz.
All the items belonged to Gary Pepper. No Hound Dog. Pepper was not only a huge Presley fan and president of a Presley fan club, but a close friend, as many of the photographs of the two together suggest.
Like a lot of the items in Pepper's collection, the hair was a gift from Presley to Pepper, who in turn sent a strand or two to appreciative Presley fans from time to time but didn't come close to exhausting his supply.
Pepper, who had cerebral palsy, died in 1980, three years after Presley, and left his collection to his nurse, and that is who is putting the items up for auction, said Mary Williams, of the auction house.
She said Pepper died without telling anyone exactly where the hair came from or when it was cut, but she said it appears that it was clipped during Presley's stint in the army or around that time.
Williams did acknowledge that there has never been a DNA test done on the hair. But, she said, the auction house did take it to "somewhat of a hair authenticator" who compared it to his own sample of Presley's hair and concluded it was the real deal.
"I'm very careful with the hair I authenticate," said John Reznikoff. A Connecticut collector of such mundane items as stamps and documents, Reznikoff
also has samples of hair that once sat atop some of the most famous heads in history, from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. He even says he has some of Michael
"I have a high resolution scan and I took mine (Presley hair sample) out and the coarseness and color of it, they all match," he said. "I did say short of a DNA test proving otherwise."
Jackson's hair that was famously singed during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984.
Williams said she doesn't know what to expect, saying that the best estimate is that the hair is worth $8,000-$12,000. But, she quickly added, a few years back some of Presley's hair that had been collected by his barber was put up for bid and sold for $115,000.
"There's an interest in owning a piece of a celebrity," she said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ECONOMY
**Students stand** in the back row of a full chemistry class at Cal State University-East Bay in Hayward, Calif. Sept. 23. More than 50 students were on a waiting list for the class. In cash-strapped California and around the country, deep budget cuts are trapping students in a kind of enrollment curtailment, where they're in school but can't get seats in the courses they need for a degree.
Budget cuts could lead to more time spent in college
Struggle to enroll expensive for students
BY JUSTIN POPE AND TERENCE CHEA Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — It isn't just tuition increases that are driving up the cost of college. Around the country, deep budget cuts are forcing colleges to lay off instructors and eliminate some classes, making it harder for students to get into the courses they need to earn their degree.
The likely result: more time in college.
And while that may sound agreeable to nostalgic alumni, to students like Michael Redoglia, time is money.
Early this semester at San Francisco State University, Redogilus unsuccessfully crashed 26 different classes, hoping to find space that would move him closer to a hospitality management degree. Outside
some classrooms, wait-listed students took turns standing closest to the door so they could hear the lecture and not fall too far behind should they get in.
Redoglia, a fourth year student, is now enrolled in just two courses. He could lose financial aid, and his plan to finish his degree in four-and-a-half years is up in smoke.
Policymakers right up to President
Barack Obama have been calling on public colleges to move students through more efficiently, and some have been doing so. But experts say any recent progress is threatened by unprecedented state budget cuts that have trimmed course offerings.
Some students struggle for places in the core entry-level classes such as composition and math because the part-time instructors who typically teach those courses are the first to be laid off in tough times. Other students are shut out of crowded core courses in their majors by upperclassmen. Some upperclassmen face an even tougher road. The upper-level classes they need
"They will not graduate on time, I hope they will graduate at all," said David Baggins, who as chairman of political science at Cal State University-East Bay has been bombarded with requests for spots in already packed classes.
"They will not graduate on time.I hope they will graduate at all."
DAVID BAGGINS Chairman of political science at Cal State University-East Bay
have been cut entirely because they aren't popular enough.
In the 450,000-student California State system — the nation's largest public university system — the average is longer, in part because of large numbers of low-income, part-time and transfer students. A 2007 study
through within five. A study of 2009 graduates is not yet complete.
of students who entered 12 years earlier found they took an average of 5.7 years. Officials say that number was probably falling slightly before the current cuts hit.
Around the country, the belt-tightening has made the usual begging and pleading with professors to make more space especially urgent.
"Some of them are more open — they understand you're trying to get into classes you need," said Haley Sink, a sophomore at Virginia Tech from Kernersville, N.C., who failed to get into several classes this year and hopes to avoid a fifth year of out-of-state tuition. "Others say, 'I absolutely cannot handle more students.'"
Money isn't necessarily the only problem, some experts argue. Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, said universities focus too much on prestigious but unessential graduate programs at the expense of the undergraduate basics. Others want professors pushed harder to teach essential courses instead of their own boutique interests — and students to accept more unpopular early-morning slots.
HEALTH
Syria's president bans public smoking
BY ALBERT AJI Associated Press
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrias president on Monday issued a decree banning smoking in public places, joining an anti-smoking trend already under way in other Arab countries.
The ban also includes a rare restriction in the Arab world: limiting places where Syrians can indulge in the hubbly bubbly water pipes known locally as argileh.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Bashar Assad's decree, which will go into effect in six months, bans smoking in restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theaters, schools, official functions and on public transport. Offenders will be fined 2,000 Syrian pounds — about $45.
Patrons smoke water pipes at a café in downtown Damascus, Syria Monday. Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree late Sunday banning the smoking, selling and providing of tobacco products at certain public utilities.
But the ban was often flouted and not strictly enforced. The younger Assad recently issued a law that banned the sale of tobacco to those under the age of 18.
father, Hafez, that banned smoking in government institutions, hospitals and at the airport.
Syria had taken steps before to try to restrict smoking, including a 1996 decree issued by Assad's late
Monday's decree is a much more sweeping measure reflecting Syria's desire to join other Arab countries struggling to control smoking with bans and anti-smoking campaigns.
Such laws are not easily enforced in the tobacco-loving Arab world, where people light up in offices, universities, taxis and even hospitals and where smoking has long been a social imperative and a rite of passage for young men. Packs can cost as little as 50 cents.
The decree issued by Assad, a British-trained eye doctor, also bans the favorite Mideast pastime — smoking water pipes — except in well-ventilated and designated
areas. Also outlawed are tobacco advertising and the sale and import of sweets and toys modeled after tobacco products.
Health Minister Rida Saeed said authorities were working on campaigns that explain to the public "the health hazards of smoking and the environmental, economic and social vices of smoking."
Emirates — and most recently Iraq — have imposed similar restrictions on smoking, but the bans vary in scope and enforcement.
Iraq's government in August unveiled sweeping curbs on smoking after parliament ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires governments to fight smoking.
Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab
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