THE UNIVERSITY OF DALY KANSAN
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2009
NEWS
3A
ATHLETICS
Williams Fund opens to students
BY JESSE RANGEL jrangel@kansan.com
This year, students can start the road to becoming alumni donors to athletics with $25.
Students can now start contributing to the Williams Fund while in school. The Williams Fund is the fundraising portion of the Athletics Department that accepts donations, which go toward getting priority seating at football and men's basketball games, from fans. Fans can earn points relative to the amount of money they donate. For the first time, students can sign up to the new Jr. Williams Fund and receive priority points to their names when they leave school.
Non-student men's basketball tickets are now determined by the athletics department's Select-A-Seat program, in which
donors choose their seat in Allen Fieldhouse based on how many points they have.
According to marketing materials from the fund, students will receive 10 points for every year they participate. So far, 600 students have signed up. Banks Floodman, development associate with the Williams Fund, said,
Floodman, former linebacker for the Kansas football team and 2006 graduate, said it was his idea to start the fund.
"I wasn't able to develop points while in school," Floodman said. "And that's something that I always wanted to do, is to become a member."
Mike Magnusson, Fort Dodge, Iowa graduate student, who works for the Williams Fund, said the fund provided a good opportunity for students to reconnect through sporting events by providing better seating more quickly.
"It's really the students who are interested in becoming season ticket holders later in life who want to support the team," Magnusson said. "When you're done with school, it's going to keep you connected to the University."
Floodman said marketing could be difficult when students were thinking about managing their budgets.
"That's the toughest part," Floodman said. "That's why we tried to make the price as low as we did."
Floodman said the Jr. Williams Fund was similar to the Student Rams Club at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, which also carries a $25 per year price.
Matt Terrell, director of external operations with the Rams Club, said UNC was offering the points to students below market
value, seeing it as an opportunity to keep students as donors well after graduation.
Terrell said UNC's 250-member organization had grown to 500 members this year.
"They understand what it takes to run our athletics department," Terrell said. "Like at Kansas, scholarship athletes don't attend for free."
Floodman said students who joined the University's program would receive a gift. This year it will be a Kansas Jayhawk flag. Next year members will receive a t-shirt, and members who stay for three or four years could receive an invitation to a special tailgate on football gamedays.
Students can sign up for the Jr. Williams Fund through the Williams Fund section at www.kuathletics.com.
- Edited by Megan Morriss
INTERNATIONAL
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the Associated Press outside Iran, journalist of the leading irianian pro-reform newspaper Etemad-e Melli, or National Confidence, gather in their office, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17. Iran's prosecutor general ordered the closure Monday of the pro-reform newspaper Etemad-e Melli for "publishing articles against national security and public expedition."
Web site makes Iranian protester torture public
BY ALIA KBAR DAREINI
Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran — An Iranian opposition leader on Monday released what he said was an account by a prisoner raped by his jailers in a challenge to the country's leadership which has sought to silence claims of torture and abuses in the postelection crackdown.
The allegations of torture and even rapes against imprisoned opposition protesters have become a source of embarrassment to the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's derical leadership as they try to put behind them the turmoil
of the disputed June presidential election.
Hundreds of protesters and opposition politicians and activists were arrested when security forces crushed the mass protests that erupted after the opposition claimed the June 12 vote was rigged in favor of Ahmadinejad and that pro-reform challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi was the true winner.
In recent weeks, hard-line government supporters have fiercely denounced senior opposition figure Mahdi Karroubi after he
The opposition said at least 69 people were killed in the crackdown, including some who died from torture in prison.
announced earlier this month that he had received reports that detainees were raped and tortured to death.
On Monday, Karroubi responded by making public for the first time details of one of the accounts. In a statement on his party's Web site, he warned he would release more accounts unless authorities stop denying his claims.
The account is by a released prisoner who had been held in Kahrizak prison, a facility on Tehran's outskirts where many detained protesters were held and which has been at the center of abuse claims.
"They blindfolded and handcuffed me in prison, beat me near
Karroubi has alleged that he has detailed reports from victims, former military commanders and other senior officials about rapes and abuse in the crackdown, as well as about prisoners tortured to death.
ly to death. Worse that than, they did to me an act that is denounced even by unbelievers and idol worshippers. I only had the courage to inform Mr. Karroubi of this matter," the former prisoner was quoted by the Web site as saying.
The abuse issue is particularly sensitive for Ahmadinejad's government and the clerical leadership because even some conservatives have joined in the criticism of alleged mistreatment of prisoners.
TRANSPORTATION
Car-sharing services become campus fad
BY ANNA ARCHIBALD aarchibald@kansan.com
In the last few years, car rental and sharing has recently become an increasingly popular phenomenon. Zipcar, the nation's largest community car sharing service, was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Mass. Though the University of Kansas has not yet used the service, it has become increasingly popular on college campuses across the country.
Once Zipcar has secured a place to operate on a campus, it sets up anywhere from two to 18 cars for students and faculty to use and can add more as needed.
"Each Zipcar takes 14 privately owned cars off the street," said Zipcar spokesman John Williams. "Zipcar is not a rental service, but rather an alternative to personally owned vehicles."
To use one of the cars, students and faculty can register online for $35. They then receive the same amount of credit, making it virtually free for the first few uses. It can cost anywhere from $8 to $15 to reserve one of the cars, which Williams said was nothing compared to the cost of owning a car.
Once registered, members can reserve any model of car days or months ahead of when they need it by browsing through the online catalogue of cars available at their location. On the day they need it, members can go to the designated Zipcar location on campus and swipe their Zipcard on the lock to open it up. Once they are finished with the car, they take it back to the parking location and lock it by swiping their Zipcard again.
Members don't have to worry about gas or insurance, either, as Zipcar pays for both. "We want to make the service accessible to as many people as possible," Williams said.
Donna Hultine, director of the Parking Department, said she was reluctant to meet with Zipcar representatives and was yet to be convinced Zipcar would help much at the University.
"I wouldn't mind talking to them and considering it, but I don't know what it would really do for students," she said. "We've already covered the town with transit."
She also said she had spoken with the car rental company, Hertz, about a similar car rental program, but didn't feel as though she could commit to it right now.
The main goal of Zipcar on college and university campuses is to curb carbon emissions and relieve parking and traffic congestion. Zipcar already operates on more than 120 college campuses including Stanford, the University of Michigan and Arizona State University and most recently the University of Illinois and the University of Alabama.
Laura Whitney, Aurora, Neb., junior, said she saw the advantages of having a quick and easy way to reserve a car on campus without having to own one. "It would leave more space open on campus and could be really convenient for students," she said.
Students living off campus could also find uses for Zipcar.
Lindsay Dennison, Topeka senior, lives off campus and rides the bus to class every day. She has a car, but uses it only on the weekends when running errands.
"It would be a great idea if you needed to be somewhere during the week and didn't have a car on campus or if you had a car emergency," Dennison said.
Whitney said she thought that after a while, people would be forced to start using public transportation for financial reasons and that a company such as Zipcar could be a good, environmentally friendly alternative to having a car on campus.
Despite the company's rapid recent growth, Williams said Zipcar was still a relatively new phenomenon.
"We're doing our best to educate campuses," Williams said. "But it will take time."
- Edited by Lauren Cunningham
INTERNATIONAL Young Guantanamo Bay detainee released
KABUL — One of the youngest people ever held at Guantanamo was welcomed home Monday by Afghanistan's president and joyful relatives after almost seven years in prison — freed by a military judge who ruled he was coerced into confessing to wounding U.S. soldiers with a grenade.
Mohammed Jawad, now about 21, flew to the Afghan capital in the afternoon and was released to family members late in the evening. Turbaned men, many who had traveled to Kabul from villages in a nearby province, greeted him with a flurry of hugs and wide smiles.
Jawad was arrested in Kabul in December 2002 and accused of tossing a grenade at an unmarked vehicle in an attack that
wounded two U.S. Special Forces and their interpreter. Afghan police delivered him into U.S. custody and about a month later he was sent to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A federal judge ordered Jawad released last month after a war crimes case against him unraveled over lack of evidence and concerns about his age.
"Today I am so happy. It is like Eid," Jawad's uncle Gul Nek said, referring to the biggest Muslim holiday. The nephew who was arrested as a boy came home with a long beard.
Soon after his arrival, Jawad was taken to the presidential place where he met with President Hamid Karzai, according to Maj. Eric Montalvo, one of Jawad's Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers.
Associated Press
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HUMANITIES LECTURE SERIES 2009-2010
Culture as Commonwealth
This event is free and open to the public. No tickets required.
785-864-4798 * www.hallcenter.ku.edu
LEWIS HYDE Aug. 25, 2009 | 7:30 p.m.
Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union
Lewis Hyde's first and most renowned book, The Gift, has been described as "a masterpiece" and an "epiphany, in sculpted prose". In his lecture, Hyde will take us through his current work-in-progress, exploring the "cultural commons," that vast store of unowned ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and that we continue to create. Hyde is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.
Additional Event
"A Conversation with Lewis Hyde"
Aug 26, 10 a.m.
Hall Center Conference Hall
This series is co-sponsored by Kansas Public Radio. Partial funding for the Humanities Lecture Series is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities 2000 Challenge Grant.
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