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 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 morning yesterday in Strong Hall's Rugby Ground.
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." Ann Eversole, director of the organizations
By James Buckman
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 Klanism 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.
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 Klausen 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 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 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 bigry in the face for an hour."
Marilyn Pollack, Wilmette, III., soh-
more, said the interview was a great experi-
ment.
"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 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 were used, with "KIK"
2 Feet and 5.43791 Etc.Etc. Inches
BY JOHN CALHOUN
T the young me radio.
Who would have thought?
The world spun. Slowly.
Everyone thought. But nobody told me!
The sky was a small rectangle framed in wood, and its sky blue light filtered into the room through glass. To the floor. To this man's eyes. To this young man. To his young eyes.
This room is so small. This world is so small. Considering the infinite expanse of the universe, more integers mean nothing. Ten feet by ten feet? Ten thousand miles by ten thousand miles? What's the difference? Ten infinity by ten infinity. Hah!
The young woman's eyes looked down. At the floor. She did not see the sky.
Didn't anyone ever tell her? Come to think of it, who told me? In school. Hah. First grade, second day of class — "Now class, today's lesson is that at some point in our life, we will all die." The last point. Hah! Point! Our life racing a point.
"Are we really going to die?" the young woman asked. She sat with her back to the wall and her knees pulled up close to her breasts. She was staring at a single stain of red on the carpet, from her feet and 5.43791 etc. etc. inches from her toes.
As sure as we are all born, we understand that will all die as well. What a silly question. Did she really not believe it? Had one told her that if you're born you die?
Are we really going to die? The young man thought.
The young woman spoke again. "Is it true? Will everything end in twenty minutes?"
The young man looked down from the window, the sky, and focused on his friend, the young woman.
The young man glanced at the clock on the wall and then back to the young woman.
"Yes," he said and paused. "You heard the radio, twenty minutes until the warheads fall." The sky falls.
"Is it possible we might survive?"
The second hand on the wall clock ticked. "No." he answered.
The young woman fell silent again. He had said everything she had not wanted to hear. The silence would catalyze the decay of her nerves. She remained motionless on the floor. She could not see the sky. She did not want to.
The room was just a room. Her bedroom to be more precise, but that is as precision as any bedroom need be. There was more space and volume outside the four walls than there was within. However, in containing a small volume of the universe, the four walls represented the universe. A rectangular window was set in the wall next to a clock, and a male and a female of the species sat facing each other. The male looked at a blue rectangle through glass, and the female stared at a red stain 2 feet and 5.43791 etc. etc. inches from her toes.
In eighteen minutes, there would be no life left on a planet. This room was on that planet. Nothing more need be said about the room.
The young man also sat on the floor. He sat opposite her, to one side, facing her. His back was propped against the bed.
The world spun.
The young woman thought about her boyfriend.
"Do you remember when we first met?" the young woman asked.
My God, could I have forgotten about her?
She's probably at work right now. Would she try to find me? Seventeen minutes. God no. Sweet girl. God no. Run and hide.
The clock ticked.
The young man thought about his girlfriend
"How come you never asked me out?" the young woman asked.
"Why did you ever ask me out?"
"Would you have gone out with me?"
"Of course I would have."
She was looking him in the face. Her expression looked to be one of surprise. He studied it.
Surprised that I didn't know? Or was it just the way her face should be composed seventeen minutes before she dies? Sixteen minutes. I always thought we were just friends. I thought she considered me as simply a friend.
"I thought you just considered me as a friend," he said.
The young man watched the sky as the second hand ticked.
He didn't know how to react. So he stared back at the sky. She stared back at the stain on the carpet.
"No," she responded. She became silent again. She didn't know what to add.
A flock of birds? Swans? Run and hide! When were the aliens supposed to land? When were the more intelligent beings supposed to arrive and save us? From
Monnie's ground but you?
Died, dying, dead. What is there? What is the answer? What is there really? What is real?
ourselves. Surely there should be something about our world and its life that is worthy of saving. Our marvelous art? Our big technologies? Our music? Our great philosophies?
Han! Our great philosophies didn't amount to crapp. No answers. All kinds of problems, no answers, and we sit on the floor beneath the falling bombs. They couldn't even . . . Momma . . . from ourselves.
Help us! Save us anyway! And her.
PLEASE?
The young man felt tears welling in his eyes. The sky went out of focus.
'I love her," he whispered.
His gaze fell to the floor and carpet.
74. KANSAN MAGAZINE March 2, 1988
This gaze came from her nose. She broke the silence. "I always wanted to go out with you. I always wanted you to ask." She looked up at him and whispered. "I was too shy."
"I always wanted to go out with you," he replied. He stared at her blurry calves. "Why didn't we then? Why didn't you ever . . . What went wrong?"
More questions, no answers.
are questions, no answers.
Still staring at her calves he replied, "I met a girl and fell in love. You met a boy and fell in love." He paused.
The stars spun, the world pitched, the universe rolled, and the clock ticked. Ten minutes!
He swept his eyes with the back of his hand and bent closer to the planet. He stared through his feet. I love her!
Her foot suddenly slipped. It was no longer 2 feet and 5.43791 etc. etc. inches from the red stain. She leaned forward to the young man.
"Would you have kissed me?" she almost clouded.
The young man hunched closer to the planet, nearly doubled over. "Yes, I would have loved to have kissed you." I love her! And I never cheated on her.
"Kiss met!" She wrapped her arms about his shoulders, cradling him.
He looked up into her eyes. They said, "Kiss me. Please, please just kiss me!"
kissed her.
She's now. Where are they?
Eight minutes. To shell with eight minutes.
"Once I ..." the young woman started.
He back down at his feet.
"He stared back at me." "Once when I was young . . .," she started
"""""
Buy you the universe. A small piece. This room is the universe. It represents nothing with respect to the infinite size and complexity of the universe, but as a representative sample it contains all the universe. All the questions, equations and answers. And none of them. This world . . . universe . . . is infinite and nothing. No one will ever be.
"why did we never go out?" she asked the walls
And so do we represent its helplessness. There are no aliens. They destroy themselves. We are the sole protectors of the
at in Missouri, there were 90, but more than 250" Klan
een a member since 1981.
ie joined after witnessing
t whites in Miami.
at he had been a member
nine or 10 months. He said
because he was "looking for
perimenting."
d the Klan an "upbeat,
tion," and said that one of
he Klan was to promote
e."
See FORUM, p. 12, col. 1
ate
ning should be done to get them curriculum."
bill will be heard on the House probably within two weeks, on said The Speaker of the decides when the bill will be
Branson and Lowther said would be considerable debate floor.
en the speaker brings it up on lendar, that will certainly be very stormy debate." Branson
Associated Press supplied some tion for this story.
ng army isloyals
d by violence in a middle-class
orphard near the banking dis-
m Tuesday, security agents
received an opposition radio station
neighborhood, apparently e it broadcast an appeal for riga demonstration.
nstrators gathered yesterday
ne four-lane street in front of
form, set up barricades of
and set fire to a mini-
lature GAR.
iot police chased the protest
side streets and apartment
s. Chunks of concrete were
built on the street at least
the apartment houses
fired tear-gar grenades and
tear gas into the buildings
ritable tanks, filling the entire
rhood with the acrid, stinging
fisser in charge stood in the of the street and shouted to s. "You'll come out like cock!"
did, and reporters on the w no one injured.
PROCESSOR MAXAZENE, March 2, 1988
klesman for the Panama commission said anonymous ee callers warned Tuesday sterday that a bomb was in commission headquarters, and they are associated with Associated Press the build-evacuated and searched both t no bombs were found.
47