Thursday March 2,1988
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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 I. 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 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."
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
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 Klansmen 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 a bit messy," she said. "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 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 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 must 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 quadruped in the educational value because of all the brouhaha," he said. "It heightened their interest in the whole darn thing, and the more interested they are, the better they write.
"We learned a bigot looks like, and what a narrow-minded bigot looks like. We what a narrow-minded bigot looks like."
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.
Knights tell KU students about goals
See CLASS, p. 12, col. 1
By Meredith Relph
Using bibliical parallels and historical allusions to illustrate their philosophies,
Special to the Kansan
JAMES TAYLOR, "Never Die Young"
(Columbia Records)
James Taylor is a strange bird. Through his heroin years in the early 1970s until now, he hasn't changed his tune much. He's probably still getting over ex-wife Carol Simon. Poor J.T. His memories seem to be all he has left, and this LP is full of them. His songs always have been characterized by rather stupid, yet likeable, familiar vocals and sparse arrangements. Taylor has come full circle into the 1980s and is now the mellow male counterpart to Suzanne Vega and the thinking man's John Denver. You're either already a fan, or you couldn't care less. I wish J.T. would go home.
THE POGUES, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" (Island Records)
In Great Britain, the Pogues are heroes. They have made popular a music form that
many considered dead, and they have united mums and children in the drunken joy of song. This album is not nearly as irish-oriented as the Pogues' first two. One takes cues from film themes (you might recognize these guys from the "Straight To Hell" soundtrack), other ethnic music and just plain weirdness.
I usually slam the major labels; they blow 99 percent of their time and money on bands like Motley Crue and ignore anything worthwhile. But Island Records did sign the Pogues. Wow. This album won't go gold, but it will do all right and probably sell for years. So if you're a boring person with little knowledge of what party music is all about, buy this.
John Henderson is an employee at Pennyline Records & Tapes, 844 Massachusetts St. and runs Time to Improve, a Lawrence-based recording studio.
The Total Look presents Gloria Souza
(formerly Rinke)
One of Lawrence's top stylists specializing in:
- Design cutting
- Customized color
- Hilighting
- Perms
6 years experience
$3 off cut
$5 off perm or color with cut
1 coupon per client
842-5921
9th and Mississippi
--eagle.
KANSAN MAGAZINE March 2, 1988 19
I that in Missouri, there were 1,000, but more than 250" the Klan.
I that he had been a member or nine or 10 months. He said I because he was "looking for experimenting."
been a member since 1981.
he joined after witnessing
inst whites in Miami.
lied the Klan an "upbeat,ization," and said that one of the Klan was to promote ple."
See FORUM, p. 12, col. 1
ate
ue bill will be heard on the House probably within two weeks, son said. The Speaker of the se decides when the bill will be d.
ething should be done to get them e curriculum."
oth Branson and Lowther said e would be considerable debate he floor.
When the speaker brings it up on calendar, there will certainly be e very stormy debate." Branson
e Associated Press supplied some mation for this story.
ng army lisloyals
ked by violence in a middle-class neighborhood near the banking district. On Tuesday, security agents royed an opposition radio station the neighborhood, apparently uase it broadcast an appeal for Noriage demonstrations.
monstrators gathered yesterday
* g the four-lane street in front of
station, set up barricades of
airway and set fire to a mini-
dary a car.
ni-tri-ron police chased the protest into side streets and apartment dings. Chunks of concrete were scattered across at least of the apartment house.
lice fired tear-gas grenades and
iped tear gas into the buildings
a portable tanks, filling the entire
hoodward with the acrid, stinging
oe officer in charge stood in the die of the street and shouted to dents, "You'll come out like cockes!"
one did, and reporters on the te saw no one injured.
spokesman for the Panama al Commission said anonymous phone callers warned Tuesday yesterday that a bomb was ated in commission headquarters. pokesman Franklin Castrellon the Associated Press the build- was evacuated and searched both s, but no bombs were found.