THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2008
NEWS 9A
NATION
Death threats cancel classes
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Instructor Manuel Castulo, makes calls outside Malcolm X College on Chicago's West side Monday. The college canceled classes and evacuated the campus during the day after finding a written threat in the men's washroom.
CHICAGO — Two colleges returned to normal class schedules Tuesday after a promised doomsday scrawled in graffiti came and went without incident, but one university remained closed as administrators weighed the seriousness of the threats.
St. Xavier University will reopen Wednesday, after administrators told students and non-essential personnel to remain off campus Tuesday. A message in a bathroom reading "Be prepared to die on 4/14" resulted in empty campuses Monday not only at the Catholic liberal arts college on the city's southwest side, but also at four nearby elementary and high schools.
Malcolm X evacuated students and canceled daytime classes Monday after a similar threat was found in a campus bathroom, Administrators closed Oakland because of threatening graffiti
Unlike officials at St. Xavier, administrators at Malcolm X College, a public school west of downtown, and Michigan's Oakland University decided to resume classes Tuesday.
mentioning April 14.
"We feel it is safe to return to normal operations Tuesday," Oakland University Chief of Police Sam Lucido said in a statement.
The closures just two
St. Xavier and Malcolm X are located about 15 miles apart, and although the wordings in the threats were similar, there was no indication they were related, Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.
The graffiti at St. Xavier — the second of two threats found since April 5 — was widely publicized over the weekend, and also mentioned in updates the college post-
A message in a bathroom reading "Be prepared to die on 4/14 resulted in empty campuses Monday.
days before the anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings and exactly two months after the deadly rampage at Northern Illinois University illustrate a major challenge facing school administrators, who have to decide just how seriously to take such threats.
ed on its Web site.
Wh i l e St. Xavier administrators decided Friday to close its campuses until further notice, classes at Malcolm X resumed late Monday afternoon. Boo*
said bomb-sniffing dogs from the Chicago Police Department swept through Malcolm X, but campus police made the final decision about when to reopen.
Oakland, a state university in Rochester, Mich., about 20 miles north of Detroit, was to resume
classes Tuesday.
The graffiti that led to its shutdown also made a reference to "4/14" but didn't specify a type or time of an attack, Montgomery said.
In the Chicago area, two elementary schools and two high schools near St. Xavier canceled classes Monday after a Saturday meeting between school officials and city police.
The fact that the threat mentioned a certain date helped administrators at Evergreen Park Southwest Elementary decide to shut down, district superintendent Craig Fiegel said. Other schools in the district — located in the village of Evergreen Park, next to Chicago — canceled outdoor recess and PE classes Monday.
Fiegel called violent graffiti "the new bomb threat," recalling a period in the 1960s when bomb threats were regularly used to close down institutions. He said he worries that the closures could encourage other people who get a kick out of causing chaos.
"At what point is it serious and at what point do you have to go on with it?" Fiegel said.
NATION
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This photo taken Thursday, April 3 by an unidentified member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was released Tuesday by church attorney Rod Parker, the spokesperson for members of the FLDS, shows an armored personnel carrier on property neighboring the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas.
Police heavily armed for raid on polygamist sect
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Police wore body armor, sported automatic weapons and were backed by an armored personnel carrier for a raid on a West Texas polygamist retreat, photos and video released Tuesday show.
Sect members took the photos and video during the first few days of a seven-day raid that involved police agencies from six counties, the Texas Rangers, the state highway patrol and wildlife officers. Authorities were looking for a teenage girl who had reported being abused by her 50-year-old husband.
A sect member whose wife shot the video said sect members
got the impression that state officials "were doing something more than they said they were going to do." The man declined to give his name for fear that speaking out would cause problems for his children, who are in state custody.
Law enforcement surrounded the FLDS ranch April 3, carrying a warrant seeking a 16-year-old girl who claimed she was trapped inside the church retreat and had been beaten and raped by her husband.
More than 400 children — all of whom lived in the large, dormitory-style log homes — were seized in the raid on suspicion they were being sexually and physically abused. They are being held in the San Angelo Coliseum and are awaiting a massive court
hearing Thursday that will begin to determine their fate.
Meisner said child welfare officials still can't find birth certificates for many of the children, making parentage and age determinations impossible. She said many of the children don't know who their parents are and many have the same last name but may or may not be related.
Officials have yet to identify the 16-year-old whose call for help to a Texas domestic violence hotline triggered the raid.
NATION
The renegade Mormon sect is led by Warren Jeffs, who was sentenced to prison in Utah for forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages and is awaiting trial in Arizona on similar charges.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Derogatory comments suspend DJs
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A radio station suspended two disc jockeys Tuesday over a derogatory remark about Alaska Native women made on their show, a comment that has Alaskans comparing the shock-jock duo to Don Imus.
The Anchorage DJs, known as Woody and Wilcox, were joking about what makes someone a real Alaskan, when one of them said it was somebody who makes love to the Yukon River and urinates in a Native woman. It's a twist on an old saying — also offensive to many — that real Alaskans have urinated in the Yukon River and made love to an Alaska Native woman.
Some Alaska Natives are calling for sanctions against KBFX-FM, the hard rock station that features Woody and Wilcox on its morning show.
Natives are likening the remarks to those made last spring by Imus, who called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." CBS Radio fired Imus on April 12, 2007, and pulled the plug on his nationally syndicated show. He returned to the air in December at WABC-AM in New York after a series of public apologies.
Gary Donovan, a market manager for the station, said he couldn't recall which of the two disc jockeys — whose real names are Greg
State Rep. Mary Nelson, a Bethel Democrat who is part Yupik, voiced her disgust on the floor of the state House on Sunday, the last day of the legislative session. She labeled the Anchorage DJs' comments "abhorrent to the highest degree" and called for an apology, as well as punishment by the Federal Communications Commission.
Wood and Chris Wilcox made the derogatory remarks. The station said it has indefinitely suspended the disc jockeys while they get sensitivity training.
The state has long posted the highest sexual assault rate in the nation, and the problem is worst in rural, largely Native areas, according to a recent law enforcement study.
The length of the suspension wasn't clear, though the station said the disc jockeys pay during that period would be donated to charity.
At the core of the escalating outrage is the fact that Alaska Native women are disproportionately targeted in violent crimes, including rape, said Denise Morris, president of the Alaska Native Justice Center, an Anchorage-based social advocacy organization that is planning to file a formal complaint with the FCC.