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the university daily kansan 3A
Abortion-opponent group spreads message this week
By Patrick Cady
pady@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
A pin of two small feet, attached to backpacks and shirts, helps symbolize the message of KU Students for Life this week as it spreads the word on campus.
The group hands out the pin which shows the exact size and form of an unborn baby's feet after 10 weeks of growth, from its table in front of Wescoe Beach.
"This is just our way of making people aware of this issue and inspire them to be educated," said Leah Winkler, Seneca junior and president of KU Students For Life.
The group's members do this because of their deep belief in the cause, Winkler said.
cause. "It's just been something we've been very passionate about," Winkler said.
For the week, they have planned several events to help spread the word.
The group will host Mary Kay
Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life at 7 tonight at the Courtside Room in the Burge Union. Culp is planning on discussing the effects of partial-birth abortion.
It will also host a forum panel discussion with Culp at the same place and time tomorrow, along with physicians, representatives from the Catholic Church and professors.
professor.
"I think it's important for people to realize that abortion has been seen as a war or a holocaust." Winkler said.
These events will help the group gain support so it can achieve its ultimate goal of overturning the 1963 Roev. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
Some support the group's anti-abortion advocacy efforts thus far.
The week also helps the group get its word out to a different audience: men. Although abortion is usually a woman's issue, it's still an important issue for men because they are prospective fathers, said Jasmine Pasimio, Columbus freshman.
Anna Warfield, Topeka sophomore, said that after seeing a group that advocates for abortion rights camping out before spring break called Choice USA, it was good to have multiple perspectives in order to fully know your own beliefs.
"It will be interesting to see what debates break out." she said.
what debates he had.
At one point a debate did break out in front of the table. Josh Helman, an abortion-rights supporter and Lawrence junior, embarked on a heated biblical discussion with Eric Buschelman, an Edmond, Okla., senior and a member of KU Students for Life.
Eventually, the debate helped illustrate the reason for the table.
"I'm still set in my ways, it didn't sway me," Helman said.
Soon after, Buschelman responded, "We're not here to sway, we're here to inform."
—Edited by Louise Stauffer
Adair Owen, Paola sophomore, signed the KU Students for Life petition yesterday afternoon. Wichita senior Aubrey Logsdon, who was in charge of the petition, said this year's turnout at the table was already better than last year's because it didn't conflict with Student Senate elections like they did the year before.
Election process foreign to international students
Election Squabbling among parties not the norm outside of U.S.
By Marc Ingber
minger@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Students who grew up in the United States are used to watching the constant bickering and name-calling that goes on between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Republicans.
But for international students,
the American election process
can be quite a change from their
home country's elections.
The two main presidential candidates have not escaped personal attacks this election season.
U. S. Sen. John Kerry (D)
Mass.) has been accused of being a privileged liberal who is out of touch with the American people.
people. President Bush has been called an unintelligent Texas cowboy.
an uninterrogent teenager. Bassam Chahine, who grew up in Tripole, Lebanon, said he was not used to seeing the types of attacks that get launched between the two parties here.
"It's kind of like gangs," the freshman said.
He said in the United States, the attacks were a lot more personal, whether it was about a candidate's infamous scream or his daughters.
It is not uncommon for international students to make these observations, said Erik Herron, assistant professor of political science. Herron researches elections outside the United States.
States. "We have a much more personalized campaign than international students would be familiar
"We have a much more personalized campaign than international students would be familiar with."
with."
Erik Herron Assistant professor of political science
with," he said.
Maria Salcedo said in Ecuador the candidates were a lot more aggressive and their attacks tended to be more personal than in the United States. Salcedo moved to the United States from Ecuador when she was fifteen.
was incen. The Latin American culture is more into expression and emotion so the campaigns are a lot more intense, the Socorro, N.M., sophomore said.
sophronome said.
"It has a lot to do with the culture," Salcedo said.
She said one of the biggest differences between presidential elections in the United States and Ecuador was that Ecuador had three to four main political parties, while the U.S. system was dominated by two parties.
Another aspect of the election unfamiliar to international students is the electoral college. Herron said the United States was the only country that used an electoral college with a popular election.
Other countries use a popular election, which gives the candidate with the most votes the victory, he said.
Methods of campaigning differ. too.
Paul Trigoso, Lima, Peru, sophomore, said he thought it was strange how the candidates here tried to appeal to the younger generation by appearing on MTV and in other youth markets.
But there are similarities between elections in the United States and Peru, Trigoso said.
He said that the people in Peru tried to find scandals involving the candidates much in the same way people do here.
way people do their
Salcedo said that the scandals
have disheartened Ecuador's
lower class.
"A lot of people have lost faith in politics," Saleco said.
Politicians' self-interest and lack of honesty are a big part of the reason, she said.
Regardless of the differences and the distance between the two countries, Peru tended to take an interest in what happens at election time in the United States, Trigoso said.
"The U.S. has a lot of power so we have to kind of know what's going on here," he said.
— Edited by Danielle Hillix
PLAY: Writer returns to class CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
January 1996 for his work with student playwrights.
Lim sits in his office next to a pile of manuscripts waiting to be submitted to various competitions.
The walls of the office are draped with countless posters from EAT productions that he has been involved in. On two bookcases sit a collection of plays that number in the hundreds.
And next to him sits a happy Wirsig who just returned from a five-day trip to Washington, where she sat through workshops with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights.
—Edited by Cindy Yeo
As she sits, she knows it was Lim that made it possible.
Lim that made him Wirsig took Lim's class one year ago.
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