CAMPUS/AREA UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAS
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, March 12, 1996
3A
Artists' house vandalized
Wall spray painted to protest design
The unique design of the Roger Shimomura and Janet Davidson-Hues house attracts both compliments and contempt. On Sunday someone spray painted graffiti on the southern wall of the house.
By David Teska
Kansan staff writer
Not everyone likes Dan Rockhill's design for a house.
Sunday evening someone spray painted "PAINT IT OR I WILL" in large red and white letters on the wall of a house designed by the KU professor of architecture and urban design.
The house, 1424 Wagon Wheel Rd., is owned by Roger Shimomura, professor of art, and his wife, Janet Davidson-Hues, a Lawrence performance artist.
Davidson-Hues said she reported the vandalism to the Lawrence Police Department but that the police had no leads. She said she was surprised someone disliked the house enough to deface it.
"I thought that was pretty aggressive, to spray paint someone's house," she said.
Davidson-Hues said all she and her husband wanted was a house that would serve not only as a place to live but as a place for them to work and display their art.
either end of the house.
"We wanted to enliven the place with our work," she said.
From the outside, the concrete and steel house clearly stands out from the other houses in the neighborhood. It has high, concrete-slab walls and a roof made of corrugated metal fins. The roof's "V" design allows rainwater to drain from
Sitting in her dining room with its 23-foot-high ceiling and surrounded by samples of their work, Davidson-Hues said she and her husband turned to Dan Rockhill because of his reputation for non-conformist designs.
"We understood that he was sort of a maverick," she said. "He's someone who's very conscious of using materials in ways they weren't designed."
For example, Davidson-Hues said Rockhill turned the hoist used to wich up the concrete slabs into an external feature of the house.
Rockhill said Davidson-Hues and Shimozumia specified that they wanted a design that would benefit them as performance artists, an art form Davidson-Hues described as live art made by visual artists.
"They wanted very little direct light." Rockhill said.
Davidson-Hues said the graffiti and interest the house had generated surprised both her and Shimomura. She said interest started when the house was still under construction.
square feet is dedicated to studio space, but the remaining third provides the two artists with a comfortable place to live, Davidson-Hues said.
"Complete strangers would stop by and ask, 'How's the house going?' she said.
Two-thirds of the structure's 5,000
After moving in December 29, the couple personalized the house with examples of their work. The house also features several antique light globes that hang from the ceiling and a large floor-to-ceiling window in the dining room's northeast corner.
Rockhill said he enjoyed the project but was glad to have it completed.
"It's extremely unique, and we'll never do it again." Rockhill said.
Students encounter UFOs
Some say they have had real 'X-Files' contacts
By R. Adam Ward Kansan staff writer
The truth is out there.
This message is from the opening credits of The X-Files, a TV show about two F.B.I. agents who encounter aliens and other bizarre supernatural creatures.
Carol, Matthews, a Lenaex graduate teaching assistant who wrote her master's thesis about alien abductions, said shows like this reflect the general population's growing belief in aliens.
Matthews said there was a group of private citizens who lived in Lawrence and who claimed to have either been abducted or contacted by
aliens, she said.
However, she would not reveal the name of the group because members prefer that it remain anonymous, she said.
The members of the group also do not want to be interviewed because some are well-known people with respectable jobs, she said.
Stephanie Kelley, Winchester, Mass., graduate student, has an interest in science fiction and also has written a research paper about The X-Files.
According to a 1992 Roper Poll published in the New York Times, 16 percent of those surveyed believe that they have had some kind of contact with the supernatural, and 2 percent said they had been abducted by aliens. Kelley said.
Ana Melissa Ramos, Panama City, Panama, freshman, is one of those who claim to have had an encounter with aliens.
Ramos, speaking through an interpreter, said
that when she was a child, she and her brother were on the balcony of their home. Her brother said "What's that?" and pointed at the sky.
When Ramos looked up, she saw something that resembled a black shadow encircled by revolving red lights. Then the object took off far away, she said.
"It didn't look like an airplane or anything I've ever seen before." she said.
Two other KU students, Kim Rosenfield, Dallas sophomore, and Jessica Kaplan, Highland, Ill., sophomore, also said they had an experience with a U.F.O.
Rosenfield and Kaplan said that they were driving to a cabin along a deserted highway in Wisconsin when a bright light illuminated the pitch-black highway, and something descended.
They saw a door opening in the object, but as they strained to see what was behind the portal, the U.F.O. disappeared, Kaplan said.
Candidates chase names
For Senate run signatures needed
By Susanna Löof
Kansan staff writer
For Sunny Young and several other students running for Student Senate, students' signatures are worth money.
To run for senate, candidates must either pay $10 or submit a list with 50 signatures from students that are eligible to vote for them. Some of the candidates have already finished their chase for signatures.
"It only took me a day," said Sunny Young, Dodge City junior. Young is running as a pharmacy candidate for the Vision coalition. She said it was easy to gather signatures because the students of the School of Pharmacy were less scattered than students of other schools at the University of Kansas.
"We have classes of 90 people and everybody is there at the same time," she said.
Kristen Shutte, Turlock, Calif., junior, is running as a Liberal Arts and Sciences candidate for the Voice coalition. She said gathering signatures was easy.
The gathering was not a big time burden, Shutte said.
"I've mostly been getting them from people in my classes," she said.
Shutte, who was gathering her last signatures yesterday, said she had enjoyed asking students for signatures.
"It was more like five minutes here and there."
"It been a lot of fun," she said.
"Just basically because you're talking to people in your classes about things besides class work."
Shutte said most students,she had asked for signatures were familiar with Student Senate and did not have many questions about the petition.
"Everybody I've asked so far has signed," she said.
The only exceptions were a few
students who were not liberal arts students and not eligible to sign her petition, Shutte said.
Completed petitions with signatures for senator candidates are due tomorrow. Presidential and vice presidential candidates had to turn in declarations of candidacy Wednesday. They needed 500 signatures, unless both candidates were senators.
Grey Montgomery, Junction City senior and presidential candidate for the Vision coalition, and Jamie Johnson, Lenexa junior, and the coalition's vice presidential candidate, are senators and did not gather signatures. Montgomery said it would have taken too much time, but he encouraged all candidates in the coalition to collect signatures because it made them go out and talk to students about their candidacy.
"It's a good means of getting the word out," he said.
Montgomery said that he had spent many hours talking to students when he formed the coalition.
Cesar Millan, Kansas City, Mo., senior and presidential candidate for the Voice coalition, said he and the coalition's vice presidential candidate Samantha Bowman, Wichita sophomore, had gathered 500 signatures even though they both were senators. He said he did not know at first whether the signatures would be required but decided to gather them anyway.
Millan spent four days collecting signatures, which was longer than he had expected. He said he encouraged all candidates in his coalition to get their 50 signatures.
"It's an indirect way of campaing," he said.
Brady Cantrell, chairman of Student Senate elections commission, said the commission would check that signatures submitted were valid and that the students who had signed a petition were eligible to vote for the candidate they had signed for. Students were allowed to sign several petitions, Cantrell said.
Next year's SUA president to keep Day on the Hill
Goals are to recruit more freshmen and broaden sponsors
By Nicole Kennedy Kansan staff writer
The newly elected Student Union Activities president said she has no plans to eliminate Day on the Hill next year.
Rieley Scott, Wichita junior, was elected SUA president March 3. She will take office in May, after the last day of classes.
Scott said she wanted SUA to continue to present Day on the Hill, the KU lecture series, the homecoming parade, and other events that SUA has traditionally sponsored because the University community had come to expect it from the group.
Organizers of this year's Day on the Hill celebration recently received administrative approval for the May 4 event, but only after a task force spent several months examining the safety, cost effectiveness, need for and purpose of the event.
Scott was elected by a board that includes this year's SU executive
officers, members of the executive committee of the Memorial Corporation Board, which runs the Kansas Union, and Jim Long. Union director.
She said she would work on several goals in the coming year, including communicating closely with the SUA volunteers.
"I'd like to be a president the committee members will know," Scott said. "I think one thing SUA needs to work on is recruitment."
She said SUA members would target incoming freshmen through their recruitment efforts.
Scott plans to organize informational tables in the Union to inform
students about how to get involved in SUA.
In addition to recruitment, Scott will focus on getting more student groups involved in organizing and sponsoring events.
"We always work with Student Senate, but I'd like to go beyond that and work with various student groups," she said.
Scott said she thought that through working closely with other student organizations, SUA would be better able to bring new and diverse types of entertainment to campus.
Holly Shehorn, Leavenworth senior, was elected SUA vice president for alumni relations. She said that she planned to involve alumni in events and gain financing from alumni for SUA events.
"Eventually we'll work up to events dedicated to alumni," she said.
Teresa Veazey, Hesston junior, was elected SUA vice president for university relations. The vice president for membership development has not yet been elected.
Hilary Mogue, Overland Park senior and SUA's current vice president for university relations, said the board would be interviewing candidates for the membership development position Thursday.
Newly elected SUA officers
- Rieley Scott, president
- Teresa Vazey, vice president for university relations
Holly Shehorn, vice president for alumni relations
The vice president for membership development has not been elected.
The elected officials will take office in May.