To bee or not to bee
Douglas county spellers slip on'tapioca'
By JIM CZUPOR
Kansan staff writer
Editor's note: The K an san mild-mannered fashion reporter was assigned this week to a more challenging story. We sent our illustrious cub to Vinland Grade School, for on-the-spot coverage of the annual Douglas County Spelling Bee.
With all the drama occurring in Lawrence the last few days, the drama and emotional strain reached its highest point Thursday afternoon at the Douglas County Spelling Bee.
About 50 noisy and excited kids ranging in age from ten to thirteen crammed into the Vinland Grade School gym to demonstrate their expertise in the Queen's language.
As proud parents and underpaid teachers looked on, the poor little urchins were subjected to 80 minutes of excruciating written examination. As pencils and papers were passed out, two of the students did likewise.
As the room filled with a tension-packed silence, broken only by the soft whisper of pencils
rushing over paper, several parents were seen anxiously hovering over their children and whispering such reassuring phrases as "Go get 'em, Rocky, just remember da woids yuh been studying," and "Dis is the big one, kid, yuh win and yuh get a bicycle."
squirts from the fifth (so to speak).
The field was narrowed after several ties were broken, causing a mental derailment. The competitors for the finals turned out to be two hardy females from the sixth grade and three little
The finalists, two of them repeaters from last year, then faced stout competition from the only male in the group.
With words like "asparagus" and "tapioca" being hurled at the finalists by the placid interrogator, this reporter was constantly forced to thumb through his unabridged to ascertain the meaning of the words while waiting for the kids to spell them, so I could write it down.
and forced the sixth grader out in a wave of embarrassment and failure.
Shortly after, the eighth grader got hers on the word "restitution" again, so to speak.
The final and most crucial test befall the fifth grade boy as silence fell over the crowd, injuring two, neither seriously. The pronouncer pulled out the final sheet of words and served up "tapioca," to which the boy replied with much hemming and hawing until the final letter oozed from his lips and he was declared the winner and new champion. The crowd went wild and has never been seen since.
Genocide claimed by Indian
A Chipewa Indian who helped lead the invasion of Alcatraz prison said Thursday night that the U.S. government had conducted 400 years of genocidal warfare against the American Indian.
The young man will now progress to the state championships next week, providing his mother lets cross the street.
"When there is bounty placed on Indians' heads and people are going out armed, then it's genocide," said Adam Nordwall, the Indian leader.
The dramatic action reached a feverish pitch which forced the seventh grader to foul out on "sumptuous." Tension then mounted as the remaining three withstood a barrage of multisyllabic epigrams until the word "provincial" reared its ugly head
Nordwall spoke also of a "cultural genocide" which was being attempted against the Indian. He said the whites took the Indians' country and replaced it with arid desert, took their religion of nature and replaced it with white "churchianity" and finally stripped the Indians of anything unique to the original Indian nature.
Nordwell asserted that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was largely responsible for sustaining
what Nordwall said was a governmental system filled with "glaring inequities."
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Nordwall spoke of the "relocation" programs enacted by the BIA as a form of individual termination of any services the government now gives to the Indian.
He added to the Indians' credit the fact they remained silent so long.
"I add to the credit of the Indian that we haven't been on the warpath very long," Nordwall said. He warned, however, that the days of the "silent, stoic" Indian stereotype were over.
Nordwall released a steady stream of criticism at the educational programs for Indian youth. He suggested that schools implement Indian culture, history and language studies in their class structure.
do away with the man," said Nordwall, "and for any man to have integrity he must have cultural and racial pride."
He stressed the need for all Indian youth to be aware of their inheritance and culture so they may develop self pride.
"When you extract pride you
Nordwall described the invasion of Alcatraz with an air of amusement.
"Alcatraz was more than suitable for the average reservation," said Nordwall. "It was isolated, had no fresh water, no oil or mineral rights, no educational facilities, no industry and no health facilities — everything necessary for establishing a reservation."
When a member of the audience quizzed him concerning Haskell's alleged withholding of information from students concerning a recent KU symposium featuring a controversial Indian figure, he said he could only judge Haskell from his own contact and first-hand experience.
At Haskell Institute, Nordwall said, he found the administration to be cooperative and on a seemingly friendly plane with the students.
Kopechne file controversy continues through courts
BOSTON (UPI) — More than three score copies of the Mary Jo Kopechne paper lay in a vault of the Suffolk Superior Court today, but the issue of when they would be released to an anxious public remained up in the air.
The latest indication was that the 764-page transcript of testimony taken at an inquest into Miss Kopechne's death in a car driven by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy could not come before Friday at the earliest.
Release of the transcript, a hefty document which contains the testimony of Kennedy and 26 other witnesses at the secret inquest, has been delayed by a series of complex legal maneuvers between four courts - two
state and two federal
The essence of the squabble is over who has the right to distribute and sell the transcript—the court or Sidney R. Lipman, a freelance Boston court stenographer who transcribed the inquest with the understanding he could sell copies of the testimony to the news media or others to recoup his expenses and make a profit.
In his fight to win distribution rights, Lipman has gone to the Superior Court, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court probably will follow, if necessary.