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Fat Tuesday
University of Kansas students are heading to New Orleans to celebrate Mardi Gras. Some are heading to the Big Easy for business, while others are going strictly for pleasure. PAGE 3A
Politics up close Kansan opinion columnists discuss three of the candidates for Democratic presidential nominee. Front-runner John Kerry has been touted as the most likely to beat Bush. Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton, with fewer than 20 delegates between them, trail in the contest. PAGE 4A
Westward No
Despite approval from the Lawrence City Commission to move, Rick's Place can't relocate to the west side of the city. The city commission has yet to approve owner Rick Younger's plans for the bar and he has to leave his current location by April 20. PAGE 5A
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Briefs 2A
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Vol.114 Issue No.96
KANSAN
February 19,2004 IN ITS 100TH YEAR AS THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Vol.114 Issue No.96
Panhellenic women will return earlier next fall
New schedule endorsed
By Azita Tafreshi
atafreshi@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Summer vacation just got a little bit shorter for Panhellenic women at the University of Kansas.
Members of the University's administration and advisers from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life have endorsed a new schedule for the 2004 Panhellenic fall formal recruitment.
Under the proposed schedule, potential sorority members will move into the residence halls one day before other students so that recruitment can begin on Saturday, Aug. 14. Recruitment activities will then be held throughout the week prior to first day of classes, and end Saturday, Aug. 21.
The Panhellenic Council will meet Tuesday to vote on whether to implement the schedule.
This is the most mutually beneficial arrangement for both active and potential sorority members, said Susan Henry, vice president of recruitment for the Panhellenic Executive Board.
"Scholarship is something that the Panhellenic community as a whole supports and excels in," Henry said, "and I feel that this schedule allows for scholarship to take a precedence."
The Fort Scott junior said other possible recruitment schedules included activities during fall or winter break, but this plan would be more academically conducive because women would not have to attend classes and recruitment events simultaneously.
For the past two years, recruitment has started on the same day as classes. That has been demanding not only for prospective sorority members, but current members as well, said Marlesa Roney, vice provost for student success.
She said with that schedule, it was hard to focus on academics, which was especially crucial for first-year students.
"We're all here to get an education, and academics are the number one priority," Roney said. "To start the semester feeling tired and behind is not the way most of us would like to do it."
After assessing feedback from students and alumni advisers, there have been ongoing challenges in creating a recruitment schedule, Roney said. Ensuring that the activities don't conflict with Hawk Week, the start of classes, or the final weeks of women's summer jobs and internships were among her chief concerns.
This schedule will be a vast improvement that solves those problems, said Taylor Lister, head Panhellenic recruitment
SEE RECRUITMENT ON PAGE GA
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
FOR 2004 PANHELLENIC
FALL FORMAL RECRUITMENT
Saturday, Aug. 14 - Recruitment Check-In and Move-In
Monday, Aug. 16 - Open House Round Day 2
- Tuesday, Aug. 17 - First Invitational Round
Sunday, Aug. 15 - Open House Round Day 1
Wednesday, Aug. 18 - Second Invitational Round
Thursday, Aug. 19 - No events, first day of classes
■ Friday, Aug. 20 - Third Invitational Preference Round
Saturday, Aug. 21 - Bid Day
Source: Panhellenic Council Public Relations
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Keith Langford, junior guard, cut around opponents last night in Allen Fieldhouse. Kansas defeated Baylor 74-54, fulfilling the promise Langford made two days ago after practice. "I hate to say it, but we won't lose to them," he said. See page 7A for men's basketball coverage.
Annie Bernethy/Kansan
Senate fills one-half of replacement seats
By Andy Marso
amarso@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
Student Senate wanted to add 12 replacement senators last night, but were able to find only six. The remaining six seats were left vacant because there were no applicants qualified to fill them.
Tyler Longpine and Patrick Bengson were appointed to serve as junior/senior College of Liberal Arts and Sciences senators to represent CLAS students with more than 60 hours. Ethan Nuss, Oluwafemi Morohunfola and Kevin McKenzie were appointed to represent CLAS students with 60 hours or less. Mike Wellems was appointed as a business senator.
Senate received no applications from graduate students for four vacant graduate senator appointments. It also received no applications for openings for the School of Fine Arts or the School of Education.
A bill was introduced to make those six seats at-large senators and appoint CLAS applicants to them, but it failed.
CLAS apprehended at Muneer Ahmad, law senator, argued against the bill, saying CLAS students couldn't properly represent graduate students.
"They don't have the required level of experience," Ahmad said. "They can't fully relate to all the problems of graduate students."
Jeff Morrow, graduate senator argued for the bill. He pointed out that Senate had put out four advertisements in the The University Daily Kansan encouraging graduate students to interview for the positions, and that none had responded.
"The people that paid attention were there, the people that didn't weren't," Morrow said.
Emily Schutte, graduate senator, argued against the bill. She said the advertising hadn't targeted graduate students well enough and that she knew other graduate students who would have applied if they had known about the openings.
The Senate Replacement Seat Committee will meet today to decide if the seats will be re-opened for new applicants or will remain vacant until the spring elections.
In other senate news:
Senate passed a resolution to support its appointed senators last night. The resolution was written in response to an article in the November issue of the KU College Republicans' Pachyderm newsletter. The article said that appointing senators was discriminatory and singled out the Black Student Union as an example of a group that did not need an appointed representative since five of the 66 elected senators were black. The resolution stated that the appointed seats were "created for the purpose of assuring that important voices of student organizations are always heard."
Senate saw a presentation of a new map of Lawrence that celebrates the city's sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary. The map included an overview of the city with close-ups of civic landmarks along the right and left borders of the map. The maps are on sale at the Kansas Union Bookstore for $19.95 with proceeds funding sesquicentennial events.
- Edited by Paul Kramer
MTV parody leads student to success
By Samia Khan
skhan@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Will Russell gave MTV more than they asked for.
Last summer, the Wheaton, Ill., sophomore picked up a flier for a MTV contest while shopping in his hometown. Producers of TRL were looking to film an episode and host a party in a local resident's backyard for the MLB All-Star game in Chicago that summer. The flier instructed contestants to film their backyards and send in the video.
"I'll make movies for any reason whatsoever," Russell said. "But I wasn't going to let it be ordinary. I either want to make people laugh or say 'That's intense.'"
So instead of just filming his backyard, Russell made the five-minute video look like an episode of the popular MTV show, Cribs.
After 15 hours of editing, the finished product was a parody identical to the style of the MTV show: exaggerated angles and an edgy soundtrack. But instead of Cristal in the refrigerator there were salmon files, and his white Plymouth minivan took the place of an
Escalade in the driveway.
Escalade in the driveway. "We thought they would think we were making fun of them and that there would be no way we were going to win," Russell said.
A week after he sent in his video, producers from MTV called to tell him he did win and they would be in contact with him to set up plans for the backyard bash. A few days later, MTV called back and cancelled. Russell said they told him it would not be feasible to bring TRL to Chicago.
Congrige. "They were pretty shady and vague about it," he said. "I assumed they didn't have the money to do it."
MTV chose a winner from New Jersey instead.
"We did it as a joke," he said. "It worked out that somebody who actually wanted it got it."
The art of filmmaking is not something Russell usually takes as a joke. Russell started making films for class projects when he was 13. He used every class project as an opportunity for a funny or elaborate film. Not only was it an easy A, he said, but it also provided him with an
SEE MTV OB PAGE 6A
Brent Carter/Karman
Mike Feld, Denver, Colo., sophomore, and Will Russell, Wheaton, Ill., sophomore, discussed what digital effects would work well in their latest video project last night at Theta Chi. Russell and Feld have been producing videos together in Feld's fraternity room since August and they are now writing a comedy script called Go for the Gold. "It is kind of like a comedy version of Rudy but with ice skaters and funnier," Feld said.
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