6A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
MONDAY. APRIL 3. 2006
IMMIGRATION
G. Marc Benavidez/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Marchers participate in a parade honoring the late Cesar Chavez Saturday in Wichita.
Students cut class to protest immigration bill
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WICHITA — More than 350 Kansas students walked out of high school Friday, joining thousands of students across the country demonstrating against immigration bills being debated in Congress.
Some 250 high school students carried flags from the United States and Latin American countries as they marched to Wichita's City Hall, where they gave speeches about their parents' lives as immigrants and chanted in English and Spanish.
Carlos Ramos, a junior at Wichita South High School said the plan to walkout spread through word of mouth, and
students decided to leave school even if they lacked permission
A group of about 100 Topeka students also marched Friday, the same day students in California, Texas, Nevada and other states held demonstrations against the federal proposals. Many said they feared relatives could be deported if a bill calling for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration passed.
Most of the protests were peaceful, and were timed to coincide with the 79th anniversary of the birth of the late Cesar Chavez, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union who became a champion of poor, Hispanic agricultural workers in the 1960s and '70s. There was a stabbing during a
protest in Virginia and another student was arrested in Las Vegas, however.
Superintendent Winston Brooks of Wichita said adults had encouraged the students to leave the classroom, and added that he would press charges should he discover any "legal violations encouraging students to be truant."
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a peaceful protest about something that you're passionate about," said Brooks. "What I am upset about is that we had some adults, not parents, that encouraged students to be truant today."
Ana Romero, a senior at East High School in Wichita, said students organized the event.
"We saw rallies in California and Texas and wanted to do something," said Romero, 18. "We didn't walk out to be rebellious."
Several high school administrators said they would treat participation in the march as an unexcused absence, which requires that the students' parents accompany them when they return to school.
Ray Collins, a Witchita North High School junior, said he decided to go to the march after his father called the school to have him excused for the day.
"They teach in school that they should stand up for themselves," said Collins' father Steven Ramirez, "and that's what they're doing."
LAWRENCE
DNA may solve murder mystery
Corpse will be exhumed, tested in suspected life insurance fraud
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
"Hopefully, we'll expose a beautiful face — a skull, that's what we're hoping for," Van Gerven said. "It could be dust ... (or) it could be a very well-preserved skeleton."
LAWRENCE — Two University of Colorado professors hope a 127-year-old mystery involving an unmarked grave in Kansas will be solved as soon as next month.
Questions about who was buried in the grave eventually led to the creation of an important piece of federal evidence law in the late 1800s.
A Douglas County judge on Friday gave Colorado anthropology professor Dennis Van Gerven and law professor Marianne Wesson permission to exhume a body in the grave at Lawrence's Oak Hill Cemetery.
The dig likely will happen in mid-May.
Martin approved the request after the professors pledged to return the remains to the grave within 48 hours and that the process would be handled in a dignified way.
Van Gerven said crews would dig only 2 feet into the ground with heavy machinery. After that, a team will dig by hand through each layer until they spot the coffin.
They hope to determine if the corpse is John Hillmon or Frederick A. Walters.
They'll remove the bones—if there are any—and take them to a University of Kansas lab, where they'll clean and photograph them.
Van Gerven said that if the skull was in good shape, he would be able to superimpose a photo of it on other photographs, to see which man it matches.
He said Hillmon's nose was distinctively different from Walters'
If there's only dust in the grave, a small sample will be taken for DNA testing.
When Hillmon's death was reported in 1879, life insurance companies suspected that Hillmon and a companion had killed Walters to collect on Hillmon's life insurance policy.
Walters reportedly had sent his girlfriend a letter announcing plans to travel with Hillmon.
The dispute over the case led to six trials, and it went twice to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Using Walters' letter to his girlfriend, the court's first ruling created an exception to the hear-say rule that allows out-of-court statements by third parties to be used as evidence if they describe the intentions of the speaker or the writer.
Wesson said she believed the Supreme Court's decision to allow the letter was based partly on the justices' belief that Hillmon was not dead—and that the court had wanted the letter admitted to help prove it.
Scholars will view the court's decision differently, she said, if it turns out that Hillmon was buried in the grave all along.
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