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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
A little cooler and partly cloudy.
Kansan
LOW 55
Wednesday
October 27, 1999
Section:
A
Vol. 110 • No. 49
Inside today
Investigators return to the site where a jet carrying golfer Payne Stewart crashed but say there likely will be no quick explanation.
SEE PAGE 4B
WWW.KANSAN.COM
Sports today
Starting today, the Kansan will count down Kansas' top 10 athletes of the century with a feature on each player.
SEE PAGE 1B
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Liposuction, lip liner part of the show
Story By Katie Hollar Photos By Chad Cummings and Anne Roberts...
y mouth tastes like Vaseline. My scalp stings from having my hair teased. My swimsuit, glued to my butt, vanks my skin every time I take a step.
The stage lights are blazing, but I can make out the shadowy forms of at least 100 people in the Burlington High School auditorium, strangers watching, waiting for me to fail. I feel totally overwhelmed. And totally incompetent.
How did I get here? And what was I thinking?
When I entered the Miss Flint Hills 2000 pageant, I told myself it was just for an article. I would go through the motions to get the details. I would remain cool, collected — and detached.
Armed with my reporter's notebook and a fresh tub of Vaseline, I had entered the scholarship pageant in Burlington. Despite the small-town
I thought I could act my way through it with a phony smile, an Ann Taylor interview suit and zero emotional investment. I was wrong.
venue, this was no small-time deal: Miss America 1997, Tara Dawn Holland, had advanced from this very stage to the state competition and, eventually, to Atlantic City, where she won the big one.
The pageant quickly became a source of amusement for my friends.
A car pool sign-up sheet in the Kansan newsroom read, "Come see Hollar abandon every principle she has and compete to be Miss Flint Hills!"
the pageant to pick up an old formal dress for the evening wear competition. I found that the woman who, just weeks before, had been enraged with me for entering the pageant, the woman who had said she did not raise me to be "cute and decorative," the woman who had brought me into this world — had been transformed into a stage mom.
I drove home two days before
the carmer to pick up an old for
"You're gonna win," my friends said, grinning. "You're gonna win." Again and again. "You are so winning." I tried hard to ignore all of this encouragement. I didn't need to become emotionally invested.
"Katie, what bra are you going to wear with that dress? You don't want to look flat-chested."
"Katie, that dress is a little tight."
"Katie, you'll need a little extra makeup."
(USPS 650-640)
My roommate, Ashly Bassall, who pastes feminist stickers on her car and
harbors a loading for all things that degrades women, thought the pageant was funny for a while. But not for long.
"Irealized I don't want to observe such mindless and blatant sexism," she said, "I'm not going."
The night before the pageant, I panicked. I couldn't find my bikini. My hair was flat. I was too pale. I didn't know my monologue, a bit from W ill i a m Shakespeare's. A
Midsummer Night's Dream.
Ashly watched as I ransacked my room to find the blinkin. She said nothing when I came back from Walgreen's with $72.83 of cosmetics. I stayed up until 3 a.m. applying self-tanner, doing my nails and fervently trying to memorize my monologue. This isn't for the pageant, I kept telling myself. I just don't want to look like a dumb ass.
See PAGEANT on page 6A
Chancellor criticizes evolution decision
Hemenway's article in education journal
By Jim O'Malley
Special to the Kansan
convocation speech.
Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by Hemeway criticizing the board for its removal of evolution, the Big Bang and all references to the earth being billions of years old from the state's science education standards. The chancellor's office helped sponsor Monday's "Nonsense, Non-Science and Creationism" lecture by Lawrence Kraus, Case Western Reserve University physicist, at Central Junior High School in Lawrence. And the chancellor has appointed Assistant Provost Rich Givens to lead the scientific literacy task force promised in his Sept. 8 faculty
Chancellor Robert Hemenway's campaign to promote scientific literacy by opposing the Kansas Board of Education's new science standards is under way.
At Monday's lecture, Krauss told a crowd of about 200 that the press and popular culture did not distinguish between real scientific theories and nonsense theories that had been falsified by experiment and observation.
He said that science could not prove theories true, but that the predictions of evolutionary theory were in agreement with observations. Creation science has been falsified, and that was why he
opposed giving it equal time with evolution in the classroom, Krauss said. He called the proposed alternatives to evolution garbage.
Kraus quoted former New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, who said, "I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."
In the Chronicle article, Hemenway said that by rejecting evolution, the board majority displayed a misunderstanding of
The evolution debate
scientific principles, rejected the central unifying concept in biology and humiliated the state.
of the board's decision was the suggestion that no one could believe in both God and evolution. The Pope, most Jewish theologians and the majority of mainline Protestant denominations reject that suggestion, he said. The board attacked the basic premise that public education should be pursued in a secular setting, Hemenway said.
Hemenway said the most disturbing part
The chancellor said that he thought the board majorly wished to destroy the idea that the public schools should be a source of truth and certainty.
"The majority of the board seems to believe that the only sources of truth or
certainty are the church and the family," he wrote.
Hemenway said that he thought the next elections would result in a new, moderate majority on the board but that scientists and the University should not be complacent. He noted that the evolution issue had been fought in 13 other states.
The chancellor said universities should produce scientists skilled in public discourse and able to take a public role, educate all students to be scientifically literate, and do what they could to educate the rest of the public to be scientifically literate.
Helen Alexander, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said the chancellor's article did an excellent job of summarizing the issues.
"It's especially important to emphasize that there is no conflict between science and religion," she said. "Science looks at the natural world. The supernatural is outside the realm of scientific inquiry but is not in conflict with it."
Edited by Brad Hallier
Housing keeps students in dark about room history
By Lori O'Toole writer@kanson.com Kanson staff writer
By Lori O'Toole
An Olathe sophomore keeps a female student trapped in his McCollium Hall room for more than 24 hours and sexually assaults her. An Arlington Heights freshman dies of asphyxiation in his Ellsworth Hall room. An Olathe freshman is charged with the rape of another student in another Ellsworth Hall room.
e
During the last five years at the University of Kansas, several tragedies have occurred within the walls of the residence hall rooms.
But the students who now live in those rooms probably have no idea what went on where they sleep.
Jon Burkett, Hannibal, Mo., junior and Ellsworth resident, lived on Ellsworth's 10th floor two years ago when one of his floo-mates died in her room.
He said after living through that experience, he would never want to live in a room immediately after an event like that occurred.
No university policy exists requiring the department to inform residents of a room's history.
Ken Stoner, department of student housing director, said in such instances, the department closed the rooms until authorities completed any necessary investigations. After that, the rooms were opened and rented to the next tenants.
However, he said it did not bother him to live on the 10th floor after it happened, and he does not feel uncomfortable around it now.
"I'd definitely choose to live somewhere else," he said. "It would feel too odd."
inere's other floor. "Burkett said." But people about that floor," Burkett said. "But people
TRAUMATIC EVENTS IN RESIDENCE HALLS
An Olaite freshman was charged with raping another student in Ellsworth Hall in October 1998.
A Ulysses freshman died in Ellsworth Hall in September 1997.
- An Olathe sophomore kept a female student trapped in his McCollum Hall room in November 1996 for more than 24 hours, during which he sexually assaulted her.
An Arlington Heights, Ill., freshman died of asphyxiation in Ellsworth Hall in May 1994.
have a right to know what happened there. It's part of the history of the building."
have a problem living in a room that had a traumatic event in its history.
"I'd be pretty much OK with it," he said. However, Booker said other sensitive students might become upset or uncomfortable living in a room with a creepy history.
"Student housing should tell people about it so they have a choice to move into a different room if they're bothered by it," he said.
Booker said students might otherwise learn of the room's history through rumors or uy students who lived on the floor in the past.
"It would be good information to know because some people have different superstitions," he said. "Then they might have to live in a room they feel uncomfortable in."
Ashley Booker, St. Louis freshman and McCollum resident, said he would not
See ROOMS on page 2A
Student Senate may expand disciplinary hearing rights
By Chris Borniger
writer@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
An administrative hurdle may stand in the way of some student rights crusaders in the Student Senate.
A bill going before the full Senate tonight would give students more rights in disciplinary hearings at the University of Kansas by guaranteeing them written notice of the charges, the right to have an open hearing and the right to present witnesses on one's own behalf.
The accused is allowed one person to help with his or her defense, but that assistant is not allowed to speak.
Presently, the Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities restricts public access to the hearing and allows the accused student the right to confront only the witnesses presented by the University.
J. D. Jenkins, senior holdover senator, is the bill's sponsor. He said he decided to draft the bill at the suggestion of Eddie Lorenzo, an attorney for
the American Civil Liberties Union, during its defense of Jimmy Adra, a Wichita sophomore who scrawled two swastikas on a doodle board in McCollum Hall.
But whether Victoria Thomas, University general counsel, would approve of defense witnesses, Jenkins said, remained uncertain.
"Some red flags went up," Jenkins said. "The policy now is pretty good, but these improvements should be made."
"I think I got adequate protection only because of the ACLU," he said.
Jenkins, who is also the ACLU advocacy chairman, said the organization was concerned that administrators would try to expel Adra behind closed doors to avoid controversy.
Adra said defending himself in a closed environment with only the help of an adviser was trying.
"I think they're concerned that the accused person would bring in 20 people just as character witnesses," he said.
Thomas is out of town this week and could not be reached for comment.
Ted Frederickson, professor of journalism and a lawyer, said the accused student had the legal right to request an open hearing. Moreover, not allowing defense witnesses could constitute an infringement of rights.
"It seems to me that presenting witnesses on your own behalf is an elementary part of due process," he said.
Jennifer Wamelink, assistant director of student housing, said she thought hearings by the Department of Student Housing were conducted fairly.
In other business, Senate will consider:
A petition to give students until the fifth and sixth weeks of the semester to elect the credit/no credit grading option.
A resolution requesting the chancellor to decide on a free-standing recreation center rather than an addition to Robinson Center.
A bill to change the funding process for student organizations
A bill to initiate the Senate New Student Project program.
A petition requesting the University to offer more community service opportunities in its curricula.
Senators will also consider bills to allocate:
$275 to the Public Relations Student Society of America.
$287 to the KU Adopt-a-School program.
— Edited by Rebecca Sutherland