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 Regents Room.
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.
Michael Robert, 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 here.
Class meets at airport to question KKK
By James Buckman
Kansan staff writer
A KU journalism class interviewed two members of the Missouri Knights yesterday morning in almost complete secrecy at Lawrence Municipal Airport.
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 Klansmans 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."
He said he told his class about the field trip yesterday when they arrived at his class.
"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 Klansmen 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 turnip excite, and then I drove them in my own car to the meeting place." he said. "I had two kids in my class tail me 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 went exactly as I had planned except that it quadrupled in the educational value because of all the brouhaha," he said. "It heightened their interest in the whole damn thing, 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 bigly in the face for an hour."
Marilyn Pollack, Wilmette, Ill., sophomore, said the interview was a great experience.
"It was absolutely both fascinating and repulsive at the same time," she said. "I'm glad we did it.
See CLASS, p. 12, col. 1
Knights tell KU students about goals
By Meredith Relph Special to the Kansan
Special to the Kansan
Using bibical parallels and historical allusions to illustrate their philosophies, two members of the Missouri Knights of the ku Klux Klan met yesterday with a KU
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son said that in Missouri, there were than 1,000, but more than 250"ers of the Klan.
an said that he had been a member Klan for nine or 10 months. He said e joined because he was "looking for rls and experimenting."
ion has been a member since 1881.
He was the first black president
against whiteism in Miami.
on called the Klan an "upleat, organization," and said that one of sails of the Klan was to promote in people."
See FORUM, p. 12, col. 1
ebate
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.
ging army disloyals
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.
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.
Anti-riot police chased the protesters into side streets and apartment buildings. Chunks of concrete were hurled down at police from at least two of the apartment houses.
Police fired tear-gas grenades and jumped tear gas into the buildings rom portable tanks, filling the entire neighborhood with the acrid, stinging ames.
The officer in charge stood in the aiddle of the street and shouted to residents, "You'll come out like cockpaches!"
None did, and reporters on the cene saw no one injured.
A spokesman for the Panama
anal Commission said anonymous
phone callers warned Tuesday
ud yesterday that a bomb was
lanted in commission headquarters.
Spokesman Franklin Castellon
id the Associated Press the build-
g was evacuated and searched both
ys, but no bombs were found.
20 KANSAN MAGAZINE March 2,1988