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 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, 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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
"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
canceled.
expose racism.
"It itwent 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 virgy in the face for an hour."
Marilyn Pollack, Wilmette, Ill., sophmore, 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
Bv Meredith Relnh
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
clause of Lawrence Municipal
AFTER HOURS
Graffiti
BY JOHN BUZBEE
At the University of Kansas, it's on the walls, the ceilings, the floors, the desks, the tables.
hen a society turns to toilets for its humor," former journalism professor John Bremner wrote, "the writing is on the wall."
Wherever one person leaves the seed of one message, graffiti blooms. It's not like a subway, and people who don't spend much time in bars or bathrooms around campus often do it. We see the people who do read the graffiti learn to accept it or even expect it.
*Common you . . . There's a lot of space to be filled here," someone scribbled on a men's room wall in Wescow. The Wescow Hall bathrooms are famous, or infamous, for their colorful, mindless and probably read more than the local newspaper.
Debates about homosexuality, religion, racism and jingoism are common on the bathroom walls. But the most popular tonic is the Greek system.
"Q. Why do GDIs live in dorms?"
*Q. Why do GIRLS live in cities?
*A. Because they couldn't make it through rush.*
And in response: "Yup, no matter how hard they try to act like brain-damaged sheep, the intelligence in their eyes betraps them."
A friend said that on a women's room wall, someone had written: "I am a pretty, nice, intelligent girl who is not in a sorority. I feel that I am my own person and people like me for myself. I've had friends that pledged houses and now they are snobs." Followed by: "Lay off Greeks" and "Please stop stereotyping girls who are in sororities."
To respond to the writing on the wall, the preferred method is to write a message near the original and draw an arrow to it. That way, thoughtful insights aren't lost on the next person who comes by.
"I'm a lesbian — and proud of it."
"What is it that is beyond annihilating infinity yet resides in your living room?" he wrote to challenge men's room visitors. No one has answered yet.
Other philosophers use the stalls to post their arguments.
Dr. Zen, a bathroom philosopher reminiscent of Kilroy during World War II, has appeared in Wescoe men's rooms for at least a few years. He probably originates from different authors, but almost always raises the intellectual level of the graffiti.
"Good for you!"
Graffiti itself often is discussed.
Lisa Leinacker/KANSAN
"There is graffiti on the Great Wall of China.
(Note: no more in Monaco, too.)"
There is graffiti on the Great Wall of China.
"I saw graffiti in Moscow, too."
house on Ninth Street.
"An orthodox Marxist approach to religion overlooks the revolutionary ideology inherent in vanity." And, "Religion evolved as a collective means of persecution and self-satiety." (The American Heritage Dictionary defines satiety as the condition of being sated, completely satisfied.)
Much of the graffiti is meant to be funny, although it often is racist or socialist. "It used to be wine, women and song," he said. "It was a bit like this."
Not everyone is amused by the graffiti. In a Wescow women's room, someone wrote, "After reading this, I'm glad I go to a private college with some admissions standards."
In places off-campus, the tone changes. Violent symbols depicting swastikas and Satan cover the concrete walls of the abandoned Theta Chi fraternity house at Ninth Street and Emery Road.
In the Wheel's men's room. the graffiti is a little more
Steve Simpson, a bartender, says he doesn't mind the graffiti. "I think it's kind of neat because of the special atmosphere here," he says. But he doesn't encourage him to call it balls, even when they ask him for something to write with.
Graffiti is institutionalized at the Wagon Wheel Cafe, 507 W. 14th, and it's about institutions. Campus heros such as Kansas coach Larry Brown and former football star John Riggins have signed parts of the wall reserved for celebrities. Other areas are covered with Greek letters and names of students participating in walk-outs.
In contrast are a Star of David and light, mindless statements such as "You don't know what you are 'til you are what you are" spray painted on the walls, ceilings and floor. Some homeowners statement shine through: "For a good time call."
rebellious：“Sinatra is King.” But the Crossing, 618 W.12W, has the really rebellious writing：“Free Kansas! We are an oppressed nation.” That kind of thinking doesn't go unchallenged。“So many revolutionaries, so few revolutions,” someone scribbled, describing the graffiti as well as the bar.
As he stood in the men's room at the Crossing, Erik Walker, a student from Baylor University in Texas, said he didn't pay much attention to the writing. "If it was better graffiti, I'd think it was funny," he said.
The Crossing once had the best bathroom walls in town, covered with political and philosophical humor. They have been painted over, so the new manager, Tim Conroy, put up a chalkboard to encourage more good graffiti.
"A lot of the stuff is really profound, and a lot of it is humorous," Conroy says. "There's a lot of poetry I've memorized in a bathroom."
John Buzbee is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism.
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THE LADY JAYHAWKS
gle.
at he had been a member
or 10 months. He said
because he was "looking for
perimenting."
at in Missouri, there were 0, but more than 250" Klan.
en a member since 1981.
joined after witnessing whites in Miami.
I the Klan an "upbeat, ion," and said that one of the Klan was to promote
- not police chased the protest to side streets and apartments. Chunks of concrete were leaked that least the apartment house.
See FORUM, p.12, col. 1
ce fired tear-gas greanes and dte tear gas into the buildings portable tanks, filling the entire sorbhood with the acrid, stinging
in the speaker brings it up on endar, there will certainly beery stormy debate." Branson
ate
ionstrators gathered yesterday the four-lane street in front ofation, set up barricades of ig trash and set fire to a mini-
dll will be heard on the House
robably within two weeks,
a said. The Speaker of the
decides when the bill will be
Branson and Lowther said would be considerable debate floor.
ing should be done to get them urriculum."
Associated Press supplied some tion for this story.
d by violence in a middle-class orchard near the banking dis On Tuesday, security agents yed an opposition radio station e neighborhood, apparently it broadcast an appeal for orieza demonstrations.
ng army isloyals
Cards & Gifts
Downtown, 1107 Mass.
officer in charge stood in the center of the street and shouted to nts. "You'll come out like cocktail!"
e did, and reporters on the saw no one injured.
pokesman for the Panama Commission said anonymous one callers warned Tuesday yesterday that a bomb was found in the Panama Francisco pokesman Franklin Castrellon ei Association Press the build's evacuated and searched both but no bombs were found.
8 KANSAN MAGAZINE March 2; 1988