THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday March 2,1988
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 98, No. 109 (USPS 650-640)
KKK heated topic
Issues aired at meeting
By Rebecca J. Cisek
Kansan staff writer
Students, faculty and administrators met yesterday to update each other on the forum scheduled for Monday that would bring members of the Ku Klux Klan to campus.
About 15 people attended the two-hour closed meeting yesterday in Strong Hall's Rise.
David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the meeting was not called to make any decisions about Monday's forum. Wayne Webb, president of the Black Student Union, said the purpose of the meeting was to open the lines of communication.
"What better way to pique interest in the klan than deny them by camping" $^{489}$ or $^{490}$.
Michael Foubert, Lawrence graduate student and president of Slightly Old Americans for Freedom, is organizing the forum titled "Freedom of Expression in the University Environment: Voices from the Right." Ann Eversole, director of the organizations and activities center, said the site of the forum had not been confirmed vet.
Foubert said that the only way to educate people about the Klan was to allow people to view the group for themselves.
Foubert said he had received threats from people who said violence would result if the forum took place. He received threats from a clergyman, a faculty member and others who had left messages on his answering machine. The callers said they would blame Foubert's group for any violence that might occur.
Jim Denney, director of KU police, said that security for the forum would require more than 100 hours of planning but that he didn't yet have enough information on the event to make plans.
Class meets at airport to question KKK
By James Buckman
A KU journalism class interviewed two members of the Missouri Knights yesterday morning in almost complete secrecy at Lawrence Municipal Airport.
Kansan staff writer
See KLAN, p. 10, col. 1
Harry Jones, the instructor of the reporting class that conducted the interview, originally had intended his class to interview members of the white supremacist group, an affiliate of the Ku Klux Klan, in his classroom on the KU campus in February.
But controversy and pressure from members of the black community, partly because Jones invited the Klausmen to speak during Black History Month, caused Jones to find an alternate means of conducting the interview exercise.
Jones said his students were not told that they would conduct the interview yesterday.
"The class had a clue that it was going to be in March," he said. "I did it today because I wanted to get the damn thing over with."
I wanted to get the talk over with.
He said he told his class about the field trip
"They were told at 8:30 when they arrived in room 101 downstairs to get in their cars and go out to the airport," Jones said.
In a note given to his students before they left for the airport, Jones said the trip would be voluntary, with the expectation that the event would attract no attention and occur without incident. The note said that at the first sign of any incident or disturbance, such as a protest demonstration, the students would be free to leave and consider the class
canceled.
Jones said he had asked the Klansman Tuesday night to do the interview. He said he had an agreement with the members that he would give them only short notice before the interview so that they could not arrange for demonstrations or controversy to call attention to their cause.
"I had them meet me at a restaurant near the turnpike exit, and then I drove them in my own car to the meeting place." he said. "I had two kids in my class tail我 just to make sure they didn't have somebody tailing us. They didn't try to double-cross me."
He said that the secrecy surrounding the class exercise had successfully allowed for him to carry out his original objective: giving his students a chance to report on and
expose racism.
"It it went exactly as I had planned except that it quadrupled in the educational value because of all the brouhah," he said. "It heightened their interest in the whole dang, and the more interested they are, the better they write.
"We learned what a bigot looks like, and what a narrow-minded bigot looks like. We stared bigry in the face for an hour."
Marilyn Pollack, Wilmette, III., sophomore, said the interview was a great experi-
"It was absolutely both fascinating, and repulsive at the same time," she said. "I'm glad we did it.
Missouri Knights members J. Allen Moran, an exalted cyclops, and Dennis Mahon, a king kleagle.
See CLASS, p. 12, col. 1
Knights tell KU students about goals
By Meredith Relph
Craig Sands/KANSAN
Special to the Kansan
Using biblical parallels and historical allusions to illustrate their philosophies, two members of the Missouri Knights of the ku Klux Klan met yesterday with a KU journalism class at Lawrence Municipal Airport.
The visit had been postponed since mid-February, when several groups protested the presence of the group on campus during Black History Month. The Klansmen had been scheduled to take part in a classroom interviewing exercise for a Reporting II class and appear on KJHK's JaVayt 81 as part of a call-in forum.
"We are not race haters," Mahon said. "We are race separatists. We want a separate white nation."
Both on-campus appearances were canceled Feb. 19 following community outrage and accusations that KU was supporting racism by allowing the group to speak. Both appearances were moved to off-campus locations.
Dennis Mahon, a kleagle, and J. Allen Moran, an exalted cyclops, answered questions, presented the foundations of the Klan's beliefs and outlined the organization's plans for an "all-white society."
Mahon cited drugs, divorce and mixed marriages as the reasons for what he called the decline of white society in the United States. He said that the new society was planned in the Northwest United States and would exclude blacks, Jews and all people who are not of "pure white ancestry."
The Klansmen were unable to give a time frame for the establishment of such a
They also explained the foundations of
the KKK and said that the Klan had been formed after the Civil War by ex-Confederate soldiers to protect widows and orphans during the reconstruction of the South.
"The Klan saved the South," Mahon said.
Moran said that contrary to what was popularly believed about the Klan, it was not a diving organization.
"Membership has doubled, even tripled, in the last few months," he said.
However, they would not produce membership figures, citing a KKK oath of secrecy.
Mahon said that in Missouri, there were "less than 1,000, but more than 250" members of the Klan.
Moran said that he had been a member of the Klan for nine or 10 months. He said that he joined because he was "looking for answers and experimenting."
Mahon has been a member since 1981.
He was treated after witnessing
yellows that white people
Mahon called the Klan an "upbeat, secret organization," and said that one of the goals of the Klan was to promote "pride in people."
See FORUM, p. 12, col. 1
Qualified admissions bill sent to House floor for debate
Committee passes proposal without recommendation
Bv lill less
Kansan staff writer
Several members of the committee said that they opposed the bill but that they thought the entire House should have the chance to vote on it.
Despite opposition from much of the House Education Committee, a qualified-admissions bill was passed yesterday to the House of Representatives floor.
The bill was passed without a recommendation.
"There are some issues that are bigger than one committee," state Rep. David Miller, R-Eudora, said. "It's appropriate for all of us to deal with this one."
A committee can either kill a bill or send it to the Legislature with a positive recommendation, a negative recommendation or no recommenda-
she said.
State Rep. Jessie Branson, D-Lawrence, said she thought the bill was moved without recommendation because it was the only way to get it out of committee.
"There would not have been votes to get it out of committee otherwise."
The bill would require entering freshmen to have completed a high school curriculum set by the Board of Regents with at least a C average.
The curriculum recommended includes three years of math, science and social studies, four years of English and two years of foreign language. The foreign language requirement would not take effect until 1994, the others in 1992.
Branson said there was strong partisan disagreement on the bill, with Republicans favoring it and Democrats opposing it. However, Branson and state Rep. Jesse Harder, D-Buhler, voted to send the bill without recommendation. Branson said she did it as a courtesy to state Rep. Denise Apt, R-Iola, chairman of the committee. Apt introduced the bill.
State Rep. James Lowther, R-Emporia, who moved that the bill be sent without recommendation, also said there seemed to be partisan disagreement on the bill.
But Branson said the failure to pass the bill with a recommendation also meant that there was not enough Republican support for the bill because the Democrats were a minority on the committee.
Lowther said he supported the qualified admissions bill.
"I look at it as a way to see that Kansas high school students have a
better opportunity to succeed," he said.
But Branson said there were other ways to better prepare students for college, such as strengthening programs at the primary and secondary levels and raising teacher salaries to attract more qualified teachers.
Lowther said that another complaint he had heard about qualified admissions was that some school districts did not have the capacity to offer classes that would be required under the bill.
"But to me that's all the more reason to pass it," he said. "If they're not offering the classes,
The bill will be heard on the House floor probably within two weeks, Branson said. The Speaker of the House decides when the bill will be heard.
something should be done to get them in the curriculum."
Both Branson and Lowther said there would be considerable debate on the floor.
"When the speaker brings it up on the calendar, there will certainly be some very stormy debate," Branson said.
The Associated Press supplied some information for this story.
Busing
Because of a lack of campus parking, science library construction workers park at 23rd and Iowa streets and ride a bus to work.
Noriega purging army of suspected disloyals
The Associated Press
PANAMA CITY, Panama — An opposition leader said yesterday that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was purging his army of suspected opponents.
Guillermo Cochez, a national legislator and vice president of the opposition Christian Democratic Party, told reporters that Noriega apparently had fired two senior colonels and two majors suspected of being disloyal.
Cochez said they included Col. Marcos Justines, who as chief of staff was No. 2 in the Panamanian Defense Forces and next in line to succeed Noriega.
For a second day, the strike was
Cochez said Col. Elias Castillo, the army chief and the No. 4 mm in the military hierarchy, also was fired, along with two majors, Moises del Rio and Fernando Quesada.
Cochez said he could not absolutely confirm the firings, but several diplomatic sources said they also had heard the reports and tended to believe them.
"I think the purge is good for the democratic process because it will show the other officers that he (Noriega) is not interested in the institution, only in himself." Cochez said. "Most officers are supporting Noriega because they consider it an institutional problem."
Demonstrators gathered yesterday along the four-lane street in front of the station, set up barricades of burning trash and set fire to a mini van and a car.
marked by violence in a middle-class neighborhood near the banking district. On Tuesday, security agents destroyed an opposition radio station in the neighborhood, apparently because it broadcast an appeal for anti-Noriega demonstrations.
Anti-riot police chased the protesters into side streets and apartment buildings. Chunks of concrete were thrown at them, but least two of the apartment houses.
Police fired tear-gas grenades and pumped tear gas into the buildings from portable tanks, filling the entire neighborhood with the acrid, stinging
The officer in charge stood in the middle of the street and shouted to residents, "You'll come out like cockroaches!"
None did, and reporters on the scene saw no one injured.
A spokesman for the Panama Canal Commission said anonymous telephone callers warned Tuesday and yesterday that a bomb was planted in commission headquarters.
Spokesman Franklin Castrellon told the Associated Press the building was evacuated and searched both days, but no bombs were found.