4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2007
BOOKSTORE (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
especially well because of its small size, Keating said. She said she helped nearly all her customers face-to-face.
"It's just easier when we help customers by finding their books," said Izzy Bond, a Lawrence junior and KU Bookstores employee. "At the beginning of the semester, it's confusing and when you help them it's easier."
Jayhawk Bookstore, University Book Shop. Beat the Bookstore and KU Bookstores all cooperate with each other to prevent theft. If one store sees a suspicious person, it alerts the other stores. Tim Norris, director of KU Bookstores, said preventing theft would never be easy, but the stores were doing all they could.
"Thethies do this for a living," he said. "At the end of the day, they can grab something and run. But we're holding it down, and wed like to hope students would help us too."
- Edited by Kaitlyn Syring
Arabic school faces struggles in opening year
EDUCATION
BY DEEPTI HAJELA ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the city's newest public schools is named for poet who promoted peace and published his most famous work while living in New York, but there has been little peace for the Khalil Gibran International Academy.
With a little more than a week remaining until the academic year starts, the school — announced in February as the city's first to offer instruction in Arabic and on Arab culture — already has had to move once and has its second principal, both because of protests.
Critics have attacked the school, named for a Lebanese Christian, as a potential radical Islam training ground.
Supporters have been taken aback by the controversy.
"In fact it is a regular public
school, the only difference is they're going to use Arabic as a medium," said Shaim Ali, imam at the Islamic Cultural Center in Manhattan, who served on an interfaith advisory council for the school. "It is also-
lutely not a religious school and no one has any intention of teaching religion."
The city Department of Education announced the school as one of 40 new schools opening this fall.
are themed, covering areas from the arts to social justice to Chinese language.
The school was originally going to take space in an elementary school in Brooklyn. Parents at the
"It absolutely is not a religious school and no one has any intention of teaching religion."
Khalil Gibran is starting with sixth-graders and will expand with one additional class every year to end up with 500 to 600 students in grades 6-12. It joins a number of small public schools in the city that
SHAMSI ALI Islamic Cultural Center
school objected for a number of reasons, including whether there would be enough space and whether the ideological controversy would create a security risk.
T h e Department of Education gave
in and moved the school to a building elsewhere in Brooklyn that houses a high school and middle school.
Khalil Gibran's original principal,
Debbie Almontaser, left ear
lier this month after criticism for her failure to condemn the use of the highly charged word "intifada" on T-shirts. She was replaced by acting interim principal Danielle Salzberg, a Jewish woman who does not speak Arabic.
That uproar started when an article connected Almontaser to Arab Women Active in Art and Media, a group that produced shirts imprinted with the words "Intifada NYC." The group used office space shared by an organization that counts Almontaser among its board members.
The word "intifada" has come to represent the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Almontaser did not respond to an e-mail request for comment. The Department of Education declined to make Salzberg or any teachers at the school available for comment, but has reiterated its support for the school. Mayor Michael Bloomberg
has added his voice to the support of Salzburg and the school.
The school's opponents include an organization called "Stop the Madrassa," or religious school, that calls the school "badly managed and inflammatory."
Members say the city has not been upfront about details of the curriculum, and the content of the textbooks, and they believe the school will have a hard time keeping Islam out of the classroom.
Salzberg has met with some of the 44 students who have enrolled so far at the school, most of them not Arabic-speakers or even Arab.
At least one parent was unfazed by the controversy. Yolanda Exis said she was just glad her 12-year-old son, Allan Aluder, could take advantage of being in a smaller school. "I think the size of the classroom is most important," she said.
Her son says: "I just want to learn the language."
MINE COLLAPSE
Miner mystery drills into sixth attempt
By CHELSEA J. CARTER Associated Press
HUNTINGTON, Utah — What next? That was the question remaining after a drill punched a sixth hole through a mine shaft and found no sign of six miners last seen before a massive collapse nearly three weeks ago.
Federal safety officials told families of the missing miners they would conduct testing - air samples, signaling in hopes of a response from the men and dropping a video camera into the mine shaft — but have been less than
hopeful about the results, which were expected to be announced Sunday.
"The only thing they told us is there is no void where the sixth hole is; there is no space," attorney Colin King said after a meeting between the missing miners' families he represents and mine officials.
Crandall Canyon Mine co-owner Bob Murray said this hole would be the last effort to find a sign of the miners, who may not have survived the massive cave-in Aug. 6.
Families pleaded with Murray not to halt rescue efforts, and King
said officials did not rule out the possibility of a seventh bore hole.
Previous holes yielded only grainy video images and poor air samples. Efforts to signal the miners were met with silence. Tunneling into the mine was abandoned after another collapse killed three rescue workers and injured six others on Aug. 16.
"At this point, we're very disappointed at the Murray Energy group of companies, which seem to have given up on these people in the mine. They've been unresponsive to our efforts to learn why a large diameter drill hole from
above could not have been done
and has not been done," King said.
Federal officials and mine company executives said the mountain's instability makes it too dangerous to drill a hole wide enough for a one-person rescue capsule unless there are signs of life.
The thunderous collapse blew out the walls of the mine shafts, filling them with rubble more than eight to 10 feet deep in some places. If the men were not crushed by rock, they could have been killed by the immense air pressure generated by the collapse, mining executives and federal regulators said.
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Gang-related ball caps taken off store shelves
MLB
"We encouraged and now fully support the decision of cap manufacturer New Era to pull these caps and any others that feature offensive or concerning symbols," read a MLB statement.
gangs; an all-white cap with a blue bandanna, the trademark of the notorious Crips; an all-white cap with a red bandanna worn by the rival Bloods; and a black cap with a gold team logo and an embroidered crown, a symbol used by the Latin Kings.
BY LARRY MCSHANE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — The hat manufacturing company New Era removed from store shelves Friday a lineup of team-logo baseball caps considered tailor-made for gang members, after complaints from baseball officials.
The three styles in question used colors and symbols linked to three
"It has been brought to our attention that some combinations of icons and colors on a select number of our caps could be too closely perceived to be in association with gangs," said
The New York Yankees had already joined an anti-gang group, "Peace on the Street," that denounced the hats.
RICHARD GARCIA Anti-gang activist
Christopher H. Koch, CEO of New Era Cap Company. "In response, we, along with Major League Baseball, have pulled those caps."
"My fear was that the wrong kid was going to wear the wrong hat in the wrong neighborhood and get hurt."
"YOUR MOM WANTS YOU TO EAT AT JIMMY JOHN'S!"
Both MLB and the Yankees insisted they were unaware of the cap designs' symbolism. The Yankees organization said it was never given a chance to review the new hats until they were already for sale.
New Era said it would increase its efforts to ensure it had more awareness of gang symbols, names and locations. The Buffalo-based company has produced hats for Major League Baseball since the 1930s.
The team released a statement that said it was "completely unaware that caps with gang-related logos and colors had been manufactured with the New York Yankees logo on them" and that it "opposed any garment that may be associated with gangs or gang-related activity."
"My fear was that the wrong kid was going to wear the wrong hat in the wrong neighborhood and get hurt," Garcia said.
Richard Garcia, a karate instructor who works with "Peace on the Street" to provide youngsters with alternatives to gangs, said he immediately recognized the hats' colors because of his work with former gang members.
"NY" logo of the Yankees.
On Thursday, protesters gathered in opposition to the new caps outside several Manhattan, N.Y., stores carrying the merchandise. The stores were selling a version of the hats bearing the familiar interlocking
1985. 2002. 2003. 2004. 2007 JIMMY JOHN'S FRANCHISE LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED We Reserve The Right To Make Any Meen Changes.