lifestyles
Take a trip around the world without leaving campus
The foreign students represent 116 countries.
Malaysia has the most representatives with 210 students. The People's Republic of China has the second most,with 203 students India comes in third with 118 students. Taiwan is fourth with 109 students and Japan is fifth with 104 students.
By Susanna Lööf
Special to the Kansan
KU students can take a trip around the world for free. No passports are needed, and the travelers can be back in time for class.
The travel guides are international KU students and the tourist agency is the International Students Association, or ISA.
"Every spring, we arrange 'The Festival of Nations' outside the journalism building," said Girish Ballalla, Bangalore, India, senior and president of ISA. "It is an exposition where international students present information about their countries and going there is like going on a free round-trip all across the world."
The 43-year-old festival is only one of ISA's many activities to promote interaction between people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The association has about 50 active members, but it has more than 500 people, representing about 100 nationalities, on its mailing list.
Many different nationalities meet in ISA, but Ballolla said there are never any problems with tensions between different nationalities, even though some of the members come from countries that are at war with each other or that have hostile relations.
"By understanding the culture, you can see beyond the political aspects," Ballolla said. The relations between Ballolla's home country, India, and Pakistan are tense because both countries claim the possession of Kashmir, but those tensions disappear between Ballolla and his Pakistani friends in Lawrence.
"Doing things together with the Pakistanis in ISA helped me understand their views," Ballolla said.
When talking about ISA, Ballolla wants to dispel a common myth.
"ISA is not a foreign student organization," Ballolla said, stressing each word. "It is an international students organization, and the United States of America is a nation among other nations in the world. I want more Americans to join."
Matthew Roth, Manhattan sophomore and secretary of ISA, joined the association after attending an international party about a year ago.
"I liked what they were trying to do," he said.
Roth got interested in international issues when he spent a few weeks as a volunteer helping build a health clinic in Nicaragua during his senior year in high school.
"I had never been outside of the U.S. before and volunteering sparked my interest in what is outside of the U.S.," he said.
Roth saw ISA as an opportunity to get involved with international activities, and he started attending the weekly meetings. Roth was elected secretary in August.
"Sometimes when I am busy in school and with other activities, being in ISA is stressful," he said. "But it is definitely worth it. Being in ISA gives me a chance to work with all sorts of people and attitudes."
Roth admits that he sometimes felt out of place at the meetings, where most of the participants are foreign.
"But it is not bad," he said, "it is interesting. I am used to seeing the U.S. as this big place with all these people, but ISA has made me realize that we Americans are not the only people living in the world."
The association hosts an international party each semester. This semester's party will be Friday at the Holiday Inn Holidome, 200 W. Turnup Access Road. The cost is $4.
He said the music, which is a mix of music from all around the world, the dancing and the opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds made the parties unique.
The association also hosts an American Halloween party each year.
"It gives the foreign students in the association a chance to learn about the traditions in this country" 'Ballalla said'
to learn about the traditions in this country," Ballola said. But ISA is more than parties. During the fall semester, the association arranges a cultural show, which is called International Night. This year's show will be at the beginning of November.
"Last year we focused on European and African cultures, and this year we will focus on North and South American cultures," Ballolla said.
ISA meets every Monday at 6 p.m. at the Kansas Union, in parliors A, B and C.
Japanese Erotic Film Festival opens
By Casey Barnes
Three alternative films offer a unique view of sexuality in Japanese culture.
Kansan staff writer
MOVIE
SCHEDULE
"In the Realm
of the Senses"
is playing at 7
p.m. today and
9:30 Thursday
night.
A woman on the street clutches her lover's lesspenis in the erotic, Japanese film about two lovers who turn their backs on the Japanese military society and embrace their own sexual world.
"Tokyo Decadence" is playing at 9:30 p.m. today, 7 p.m. tomorrow and 2 p.m. Saturday.
But it is not pornography, said Shannon Skelton, Tyler, Texas, senior and coordinator of Student Union Activities spectrum films.
"Okoge" is playing at 9:30 p.m. tomorrow and at 7 p.m. Thursday.
The film, "In the Realm of the Senses," is one of three movies being presented this week in the Japanese Erotic Film Festival, sponsored by SUJA.
"Sexuality is not repressed or hidden in the Japanese culture," Skelton said. "There are different views held on sexuality in every culture and the Japanese have a lot of erotic tradition through art, films, theaters and literature."
the character Sada strangles her lover, Kichi, in the erotic Japanese film "In the Realm of the Senses."
Submitted Photo
"In the Realm of the Senses," a movie involving voyeurism and sexual obsession, is set in 1936. It is about an ex-prostitute who becomes involved with the master of the household where she is employed as a servant. The two quickly reject the militaristic society of Japan to create their own erotic world.
SUA chose three different films that have been played at film festivals around the world. All three films are subtitled and include nudity and sexual acts, Skelton said.
"Okoge" (pronounced oh-koh-gay), is a gay-oriented movie about a menage-a-trois, which is a sexual relationship between two men and a woman or two women and a man. Okoke is a slang term for a female who hangs out with homosexual men. In the film a young woman becomes involved with a young gay man and his older lover. When social pressures cause the two men to break up, the woman helps the younger man find new lovers and is drawn into violence and crime.
"Tokyo Decadence," is a look at the dark underside of Tokyo. A 22-year-old call girl searching for some sense of self worth experiences humiliation at the hands of her clients. It is a statement on modern day excesses and obsessions with sexuality and violence, Skelton said.
Each culture has a different way of expressing sexuality,he said. But front views of nude bodies would not be acceptable in mainstream Japanese culture.
Andrew Tsubaki, professor of theater and film and director of international theater, has not seen the films, but he said that to most people in Japan these movies would not be mainstream.
Tsubaki said that there was a time in 18th and 19th century Japan when women and men would bathe together in public, but today, mixed public bathing would occur only in remote places, such as hot springs.
"Some films will show anything," Tsubaki said. "There is a reaction to a concealment of the past that is now becoming more free, and there may be an overreaction in blue films, or sexually-oriented films."
"Movies are much more commercialized and daring today," he said. "Commercially, film makers are responding to what their audiences want to see."
"We usually do five or six Japanese films a year," Skelton said. "With the erotic films, we are trying to break the stereotype of either a violent Japanese film or a boring epic with little dialogue."
The spectrum films committee for SUA, which features alternative movies, decided last spring
During the summer he saw "Tokyo Decadence" and got the idea for a Japanese erotic film festival.
that KU students might want to see an erotic film festival, but the committee was not sure of the festival's theme, Skelton said.
Anne Sutherland, Bethany, Mo , senior, saw "In the Realm of the Senses" during a taboo film festival in Scotland.
"It's not for the light at heart," she said. "If you're uncomfortable watching other people naked, then I wouldn't go."
News of the Weird
COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS
In August, Edward Musgrove, 32, attacked his estranged wife, a Los Angeles bus driver, as she began an evening route. He grabbed the steering wheel, causing the bus to veer off the road, hit a tree and crashed into a brick wall. The wife was not injured, but Musgrove was hurled full-force through the windshield into the wall and was decapitated.
- Five Florida counties have recently taken out all television sets for jailed inmates in order to deter crime. A Clay County sheriff's deputy said, "Knowing there's no television here, maybe they'll think twice before committing a crime." The Jacksonville sheriff said, "If people want to watch football on TV this fall, they better not get arrested."
- Clint Johnston, 69 and blind, told authorities in Mountain Home, Idaho, in August that the recent charges against him for having consensual sex with two 1.2-year-old girls should be dismissed. Johnston said that, since he could not see the girls, he did not know how young they were.
- Dan Ivy, an unsuccessful Arkansas political candidate who had just switched from Democrat to Republican, was accused recently by his wife, Sarah, in divorce papers that he beat her. Dan denied the charge in July and countercharged that Sarah, who like Dan weighs more than 200 pounds, recently physically beat him because of his decision to switch parties. Dan's attorney explained that Sarah was angry at her husband's change of party because a Republican "has increased pressure" to have a good family life.
LEAST COMPETENT PERSON
WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
In February, about a year after one of the World Trade Center bombers returned to the rental agency to get his deposit back on the van used in the explosion, Memphis, Tenn. police arrested a 21-year-old man for burglarizing a home. The man had left a pair of sneakers behind and had returned several hours later, knocked on the door and asked the homeowner, "I was wondering, have y'all seen my shoes? They are red and white Nikes."