CAMPUS/AREA UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, March 15, 1996
3A
Law students return from contest with award
Robert Porter, associate professor of law, John Getty, Ottawa third-year law student; Angela Wilson, Chanute first-year law student; Virginia Murray, Lawrence second-year law student; and John Rainwater, Lawrence second-year law student, four trophies at the 1996 Native-American Law Students Association's Moot Court Competition from Feb. 29 to March 3 at the Oklahoma City University School of Law.
KU's tribal program helps team prepare
Four students from the School of Law returned with trophies from a mock court competition held in Oklahoma City early this month.
By David Teska
Kansan staff writer
Angela Wilson, Chanute first-year law student, and Virginia Murray, Lawrence second-year law student, won best overall at the 1996 Native-American Law Students Association's Moot Court Competition.
The competition was held at the Okla.
homa City University School of Law Feb. 29 through March 3.
The school's other team, Brent Getty,
Ottawa third-year law student, and John
Rainwater, Lawrence second-year law
student, took third place overall.
Murray won the best brief competition and Rainwater won the best oral argument competition.
The topic of the three-day competition was taxation by states of gasoline sold on Indian reservations and the income earned by tribal employees. Wilson said the competition had two parts: the presentation of a brief written before the competition and an argument in which each team had to present both sides.
"It was kind of like a debate," she said. Rainwater said the competition was
Murray said that the students benefited from working with the competition judges, who included attorneys from private and state practices as well as federal judges.
tough. Law schools from Cornell University, American University and Arizona State University participated.
"The judges were very knowledgeable and were extremely interested in the issues, which are of great importance to many states and tribes, as well as how we addressed them," she said in a statement from the school.
Rainwater said this was the first time the school had participated in the competition because the school had started the Tribal Law Certificate Program last semester.
"Our going coincided with the founding of the tribal law program," he said.
Robert Porter, associate professor of law and founder of the tribal law program, said the courses offered in the program helped the team in the competition.
Porter said the certificate program was designed for anyone interested in studying tribal law.
Getty, who is not Native American, said he had come to law school at the University because of his desire to work with tribes and their unique problems, such as the conflict between tribal, state and federal law.
"They're sovereign but they are American and that causes problems," he said.
Program accused of promoting stereotypes of Native Americans
By Susanna Löof
Kansan staff writer
Bessie James could not believe her ears when she rode home from an economics class on Friday.
James, Carnegie, Oka, junior and a Native American, was listening to KJHK when she heard a promotion for a program called Space Age Bachelor-Pad Music that offended her. She could not remember the exact wording and content of the promotion. But she said it was a conversation about burial grounds and that one of the voices was talking in broken English, a Native-American stereotype.
"To me, it sounded like they were making fun of Native Americans," she said. "I couldn't believe it. I've been here for three semesters, and I've never experienced any type of racism on campus just until now."
When James contacted the station, she learned that the promotion was an excerpt from a *Brady Bunch* episode that took place in Hawaii.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "We're all native people. It was definitely stereotyped."
Sara Embree, Davenport, Iowa senior and program director at KIHK, declined to comment. She did issue a statement saying that the station's staff thought the promotion was fit for broadcasting.
The statement also said that the station discussed the problem with James and took care of the misunderstanding.
"The promo has been changed due to regular rotation of promotes, not because of Bessie's call," Embree said in the statement. "However, her feelings have been taken into consideration."
Timothy Sutton, Lawrence senior and disc jockey at KJHK, created the promotion. He said he was surprised and sorry to hear that it was perceived as offensive.
"The Brady Bunch is such a part of my own upbringing," he said. "It seems so harmless when it's on television that I didn't see how broadcasting it on the radio would offend anybody."
James said KJHK should educate its disc jockeys and the people clearing promotions for broadcasting.
Classified employees could run for office
"Insensitivity to other people's culture is not an excuse," she said.
Bill passes State Senate now must pass committee
By John Collar
Kansan staff writer
Classified employees at the University of Kansas would be able to run for elective office under a bill passed yesterday by the Kansas Senate.
State Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, who sponsored the legislation, said the bill would end the second-class status of classified employees.
"This has been a hard two-year fight to provide more fairness to the electoral process," Sloan said in a statement. "I do not believe it is fair or equitable to encourage participation in the political process and at the same time punish potential candidates who are employed by the people of Kansas."
Unlike faculty, classified employees must resign before running for an elective office. Unclassified employees, which include faculty members, can keep their jobs if elected.
Russell Getter, associate professor of political science, said the 1941 law had been designed to protect employees from a superior who was running for office.
The reasoning was that if supervisors were permitted to run for office, they could coerce employees to support them. Getter said.
"But like many political reforms, it went overboard," Getter said. "It's really punitive."
Getter said he doubted the bill would survive the conference committee process.
AIDS quilt on display in Topeka
Quilt carries local panels of those who have died
By Scott MacWilliams Kansan staff writer
The great hall was a sea of names — names of past lives that stretched twenty feet high.
Volunteers in white and visitors walked silently among the names. The names belong to men and women who have died of complications of AIDS.
Those names live on as part of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. A portion of the quilt is on display at the Topeka Expocentre through Sunday.
A voice on the public address system read the list of
"I think hearing the names with looking at the quilts really puts a face on this disease." Martha Barlett Piland Fund raising co-organizer
names, adding an audible presence to the colorful, but transfixing display. The exhibit opened yesterday. Grade school and high school students were touring the exhibit and learning about AIDS from peer educators.
spray-painted in black.
"I knew some of my friends' cousins were on some of the panels," said Kandice Deloy, Topeka High sophomore. "Several times I had to stop and catch myself.* It makes you realize that anyone can get AIDS." The 3-by-6 quilt sections featured decorations ranging from the simple and reverent to the humorous and gaudy. One panel of eight names consisted of bed sheets with names and dates
Another voice continued the reading of the names, some of them belonging to people from northeast Kansas.
"I think hearing the names with looking at the quilts really puts a face on this disease," said Martha Bartlett Piland, fund-raising co-organizer of the Topeka Display Committee. "You can see what families have done to preserve the memories of these people."
Piland said that there were 1,390 panels on display representing about 3,000 names. That represents a small portion of the total 32,000 panels. The entire quilt covers 13 acres, the equivalent of 11 football fields.
"This is the largest display of the NAMES Project Quilt anywhere in the country until next October in Washington, D.C." Piland said.
Some of the panels are anonymous, but most are specific. Many include poetry or Bible verses.
On the panel honoring Van Douglas is a poem: "God of Thunder and Might, Reach through the Silence and Touch All Who Grieve Today." Douglas died at the age of 30.
The exhibit will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.today, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Visitors of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt at the Kansas ExpoCentre read a name on a panel of the 32,000 panel quilt of the NAMES project.
Social welfare intern helps AIDS project
Office gives information on disorder,it's effects
By David Teska
Kansan staff writer
Debra Stang became involved in AIDS awareness when the disorder began to effect her friends.
"I started realizing it was an issue of social justice," said Stang, Lawrence graduate student.
Stang works three days a week at the Douglas County AIDS Project, 2619 Sixth St., as an internship requirement for her degree in social welfare. The project provides client services to those who have the disorder and educates the public about AIDS prevention.
Although the project provides a wide range of services, Stang said that sometimes all a client needed was someone with whom to talk.
"It can be a very isolating disease," she said. Stang said that people with AIDS often were ostracized by their friends and families because of the disease's social stigma, which is perpetuated by people like Fred Phelps, a Topea minister who stages protests against homosexuality.
"I saw one family who wouldn't use silverware in their son's house." she said.
Gina Mancuso, Stang's field instructor, is the only full-time social worker at the project. Mancuo said that staff shortages made it necessary for interns to be placed in AIDS-service organizations.
"It's real important for the school to provide the opportunities to inters to develop the necessary skills," she said. "This area of social work is fairly new just because the disease is so new."
Mancuso said she came to the project in May 1994 and had seen the number of clients increase from about 18 to its current number of 27.
The project also works to increase public awareness about AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Through displays, workshops and presentations by people living with AIDS, education always will remain an important function of the project, said Pam Casagrande, the project's office administrator.
"We've become a place in the community where people can call." she said.
Stang said the most important part of her job at the project was to support those who had to live with the disorder.
"With me, I want to make the lives of people who have AIDS a little easier," she said.