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Second Section
Former Green Beret adjusts to life as a student
By JOHN BUZBEE
Staff writer
Not all Green Berets are Gumby fans. But KU freshman Jeff Forker is.
Forker, who served in the Army's Special Forces for four years, also likes to read. He loves climbing on rocks. And he's a fighting soldier from the sky.
"He's a very sensitive individual," said his mother, Susie Forker, from the family home in Lincoln, Neb. "That could be lost because the Green Beret, I don't think Jeff could ever lose touch with that."
His father, Alan Forker, was a Beta Theta Pi fraternity member at the University of Kansas. But the day after Jeff Forker graduated from high school he enlisted in the Army.
"I think Jeff realized he had to do something different," Alan Forker said. "He wanted to go his own way and do his own thine."
Jeff Forker, 25, said he had always been interested in the military.
"I just wasn't the conventional type," he said. "I could not see coming to KU and going the conventional route."
Susie Forker said she was ashamed to admit now that she tried to talk her son out of enlisting.
"I thought I was going to die," she said. "I, as a matter of fact, didn't, and he didn't, and we're extremely proud of him. I had to shiftears as a mother."
When her son came home to visit after enlisting, she said, she could see a change in him.
"He just matured overnight," she said. "He seemed to have a strong sense of himself. His sense of responsibilities about it all was just incredible to me."
During his service, Forker devoted himself to Special Forces, commonly known as the Green Berets, and to his 12-man team, he said.
"You go out with those guys partying at night and you hit the town, and those are guys you can go anywhere with and say anything to," he said. "They'll back you up no matter what."
He worked and trained with them, he said, and he would have fought and died for them without blinking. But he neither gazes,
acts nor talks like a killer
Shortly after he enlisted, he volunteered for Special Forces. Then, after sweating, straining and studying in Special Forces school, he was selected. Few who attempt the rigorous training complete it.
“On the day that I graduated,” he said, “I looked in the mirror and my eyes were not steely. I was the same guy, except I had this little green beanie on my head and this little shiny coin in my pocket.”
Forker, always carrying his Special Forces coin with the motto "De Oppresso Liber," or "Librate the oppressed," learned to use many weapons. He learned to survive in the Arctic and climb mountains. He still carries the coin.
Besides, he said, if another Special Forces member catches him without his coin, he owes that person a beer.
Susie Forker said he was idealistic. "He really sees it as, 'our country and democracy,'" she said. "I really respect that in him."
He also traveled all over the
See BERET, p. 5B, col. 2
Dan Rav/KANRAN
Dan Nay. Jeff Forker, Lincoln, Neb., freshman, demonstrates the proper way to wear a beret with his inflatable Gumby Forker served in the Army's Special Forces for four years.
Feeling of isolation leads to high black dropout rate, KU officials say
Bv IOSEPH REBELLO
Staff writer
Lynda Bassa spent her first day at KU confronting the feeling of being the only black student in aclassroom.
That day, an instructor in one of her classes decided to spend the day getting acquainted with his students. He went from student to student, asking each of them where they came from and what they hoped to get out of his class.
But when he came to Bassa, he looked at her nervously, then went on to tell her.
Bassa, Raytown, Mo., freshman, says she has no idea what made her instructor do that, but she thinks incidents like that are common at the University of Kansas. And they constantly remind black students that they are not currently, as if somehow they are separate from the flow of University life.
"Maybe it's a certain air here that says blacks aren't accepted," she
said. "Maybe it's an overall problem at KU because this is such a big university and it's hard to be one of so few in a campus this big."
That sense of dissatisfaction puzzles many University officials, who maintain that over the last six years, the University has intensified sharply its commitment to minorities and has some accomplishments to show for it.
"KU has done everything it could." said Dorthy Pennington, associate professor of communications and a member of the Black Faculty Council. "But it's still very difficult for black students here."
Chancellor Gene A. Budig said, "We have had an unquestioned commitment to minority students. We have an aggressive recruiting program. We have increased our minority enrollment in the past years. And, as for our minority enrollment record, we run counter to national trends."
KU administrators say proof of
that commitment lies in the existence of such programs as the Minority Affairs Outreach Program, which recruits minority students from the Kansas City area. And the University has at least two other programs designed to promote minority enrollment.
And while black enrollment at universities across the nation has declined sharply since 1980, KU's black enrollment increased from 655 students in 1975 to 833 in 1985, according to records from the KU office of student affairs.
Encouraging numbers
In addition, officials say, University support has strengthened other programs such as the Student Council for Recruiting, Motivating and Educating Minority Engineers; and the Black Students' Law Association.
Also, as a state, Kansas has fared better than most other states in attracting blacks to its universities. Between 1980 and 1985, both Missouri
and Iowa experienced a decline of about 10 percent, a U.S. Department of Education report says.
During the same period, Colorado's black enrollment dropped 19.4 percent and Nebraska's enrollment declined 5 percent.
In Kansas, however, black enrollment at state universities increased 1 percent between 1980 and 1985.
"Obviously, we must be doing something to attract black students," said Robbie Ferron, director of the office of affirmative action.
In explaining why black student enrollment has not declined at the University, administrators point to the presence of an aggressive program to recruit minority students and University scholarships such as the Endowment Minority Award. Also, they say, tuition at the University is lower than at many other state universities.
But although many of the University's efforts to improve black students' experiences at KU have been
successful, many haven't, some administrators say.
For example, although black enrollment has increased in actual numbers, it has remained stagnant as a percentage of the total KU student population.
Since 1975, black enrollment has remained at just more than 3 percent of the population, according to reports prepared by the office of student affairs.
Feelings of isolation
That, one black faculty member says, is the root of the problem.
Because black students constitute so small a percentage of the student population, even the most sincere efforts to make them feel more comfortable come up short. Pennington said.
"The problem has been there all along," she said "But blacks have never made up a significant population for their problems to be considered serious. Setting up development
programs for blacks was never considered part of the University's educational mission.
"But only in recent years have we become aware of the fact that the problem affecting black students exists to greater degree than the problems other minority students have."
For many black students, that dawning realization of their difficulties is a small consolation. Many of them say they are tired of dealing with the frustration of being black at a predominantly white university. They have frequently considered leaving, they say.
"Black students are easier to discriminate against because their color clearly identifies them," said Del Bynum, Teopauki junior and chairman of the Big Eight Council on Black Student Government.
Often, she said, that kind of discrimination can be unconscious.
See MINORITY, p. 5B, col. 1
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