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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Wednesday, April 18, 2001
Wednesday, April 18,2001
Sports: The Kansas women's tennis team lost 4-3 to Nebraska yesterday.
SEE PAGE 1B
Inside: Pride Week lecturer described how difficult it was to 'come out' to his parents.
(USPS 650-640) • VOL.111 NO.124
SEE PAGE 3A
For comments, contact Lori O'Toole or Mindie Miller at 864-4810 or editor@kansan.com
WWW.KANSAN.COM
Group hopes to profit from Phelps protest at Pride Week
By Amanda Sears
By Amantha Sears Special to the Kansan
KU Queers and Allies hopes Reverend Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church congregation plan to protest Pride Week events this year.
The Fight-Hate-a-thon, a fund raiser sponsored by Queers and Allies, will collect pledges for every minute anti-homosexual demonstrator Phelps spends at the Brown Bag Drag Show on Friday and the Rights March on Saturday.
As of yesterday, Queers and Allies had received 20 pledge forms from a variety of donors. Pledge amounts ranged from a penny a minute to 25 cents a minute. The group has also received $114 in flat donations.
The fund raiser will collect money for supplies and events not paid for by Student Senate funding.
Stan Handshy, Erie junior and Queers and Allies student senator, said the fund-raiser was long overdue. He said the organization's money-raising abilities had dropped off since the group began to rely on Student Sepate funding.
"It's a way to turn Fred Phelps into a good thing for us," Handshy said. "He has always get us publicity, but now we can get cash to boot. Besides, if we're going to be doing special events, I think we should pay for them out of our own pockets."
Handshy said Queers and Allies was not trying to reach a specific amount, but it had high hopes for the effort because the group had not done a significant fund-raiser in recent memory.
Lea Burgess-Carland, Lawrence junior and Queers and Allies social coordinator, said the fund raiser was originally intended to raise money solely at the Pride March. The group decided to include the drag show in order to appeal to the larger, more diverse audience that has attended the popular event in the past.
"He's pretty much expected to be at the drag show," Burgess-Carland said, referring to Phelps. "People who haven't been confronted with him don't realize how hateful he is. It makes it much more personal to a lot of people. Hopefully, they'll see how awful he is and want to change it."
Besides raising social consciousness about queer rights, Burgess-Carland said she found the Fight-Hate-a-thon ironic.
"I think it's funny that the longer he's out there protesting, the more he's supporting Queers and Allies," she said.
Pledge forms for the Fight-Hate-athon are available at the Queens and Allies office, 423 Kansas Union, or at the Pride Week table in the Kansas Union from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and tomorrow.
The 8th Annual Brown Bag Drag show will be held at noon Friday in front of the Kansas Union, and the Pride March will begin at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at City Hall and proceed down Massachusetts Street to South Park.
University close to backing commission
Chancellor considers using Coke contract money to fund minority scholarships
By Danny Phillips
writer@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
— Edited by Jay Pilgreen
A meeting with Chancellor Robert Hemenway on Saturday left Marlon Marshall feeling optimistic about the possibility of a permanent commission on the status of minorities at the University of Kansas.
The commission — an idea of the Student Senate minority committee — would evaluate the retention and recruitment efforts of minority students and faculty at the University.
"He agreed 100 percent." said Marshall.
St. Louis junior and student body vice president. "It's great the administration is working with us."
Still, in a telephone interview Monday, Hemenway would not give a definite answer.
He said no final decisions would be made until he had met with Provost David Shulenburger, which should happen within the next week.
However, Mary Burg, executive assistant to the chancellor, said the commission would "definitely" be established — it was just a matter of deciding who would be appointed to it.
venue earned from the University's partnership with Coke to fund minority scholarships.
Hemenway said Monday he needed to study the issue further.
"If we can do it, I'd like to do it," he said. Marshall spearheaded the report on the status of KU minorities.
The report recommended that the commission "serve as a third-party examiner to evaluate the state of affairs and address potential solutions to the problem as well as to facilitate greater appreciation of multiculturalism campus wide."
The report was created in response to the University's No. 10 ranking in the Big 12
Conference in the percentage of minority students.
The commission could include members from the administration, multicultural offices. Senate and minority student organizations.
Marshall will return to the University next fall as the Student Union Activities president, and he said he hoped the administration would allow him to sit on the commission, too.
"I would love to work on this issue as long as I'm here at KU," Marshall said. "When students do speak up about an issue, people listen. Our voices do not go unheard." Edited by Leigh Schultz
By Sarah Warren. Kansan staff writer Photos by Selena Jabara
Iz Slane bounded into the hallway when she heard the voice of her boyfriend.
way when she neared the voice of her boyfriend, Scott. She rushed to him, stood on her tiptoes and lifted her petite frame up into his long arms. She closed her eyes tight, expecting as always to be twirled in a soft circle, her feet fluttering outward in the air before landing gently on the worn carpet of Hashinger Hall.
Instead, they heard a startling pop like a piece of chalk split in half during a professor's teaching frenzy. In the midst of their embrace, one of Liz's ribs had broken in half.
Slane, Chesterfield, Mo., junior, stands 4-foot-7 and has a rare bone disease that makes her as fragile as a porcelain doll. She is so fragile that in her 21 years she's suffered seven broken legs, numerous crushed vertebrae, a broken arm, broken rib and,
most recently, a broken toe.
Her disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, afflicts only between 20,000 and 50,000 people in the United States — 101 percent of the population. Because of it, she's never ridden a bike or a roller coaster or played sports. She was in full leg braces from ages 2 to 16 and learned to walk and climb stairs with her legs locked, unable to bend at the knee because of the metal and leather restraints. She even learned to drive a car wearing more modern plastic and metal braces.
Now brace free, but still delicate, Liz hikes the hills of campus every day and climbs the ladder of achievement. She is president of the KU chapter of National Residence Hall Honorary, a resident assistant in Lewis Hall and a high-achieving architectural engineering student.
Her mother, Patty Slane, said it was no surprise to her that her diminutive daughter made it big at the University.
"She doesn't set limitations; they're just not there," Slane said. "She can do anything."
She has proven to her mother, and almost anyone who has ever met "Little Liz," that there's nothing little about her ambition, talent or personality. Big Dice
Big Disease
Elizabeth Marie Slane was born Oct. 26, 1979, the first child of Gary and Patty Slane.
"When she was born she was a normal baby," Patty Slane said. "But she was 17 inches long and weighed seven pounds. So, the weight was right, but she was two inches too short."
Top: Liz Slane, Chesterfield, Mo., junior, fights a debilitating bone disease while working as a resident assistant in Lewis Hall and running meetings as the president of the National Residence Hall Honorary.
See SLANE on page 8A
Left: Slane ware protective braces from ages 2 to 16. Contributed photo
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., speaks to a group of students in the Burge Union. Photo by J. E. Wilson/KANSAN
Brownback urges students to value human life
Rv Cássio Furtado
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
One day after Ralph Nader asked a crowded Lied Center to stand up against corporations, Sen. Sam Brownback asked KU students to stand up for life.
Humans should be treated as persons instead of property with regard to abortion and new medical technologies like cloning, said Brownback, R-Kan., who spoke yesterday at the Sunflower Room in the Burge Union during Stand Up for Life Week sponsored by KU Students for Life.
"All of human life is precious," he said.
"All of human life is unique."
Brownback told the audience of 35, mainly comprised of members of KU Students for Life, that he applauded their efforts in reaching out to other students, even if those students disagreed with their message.
He said abortion numbers were down in the United States and should be reduced even more.
When one student asked Brownback if he thought it was hypocritical of the Republican party to defend human life but support the destruction of natural resources for economic development, Brownback said humans and nature had one major distinction.
"Human beings have a soul." he said.
Brownback also defended bans on human cloning and said it shouldn't be used as an alternative to generating organs for transplants.
"You have a beautiful soul."
Bridget Ricke, Hutchinson senior, said she was surprised by Brownback's strong pro-life position.
Brownback also spoke at a seminar called Counting all the Votes/How Votes Count: Elections in the 21st Century, where he mentioned his efforts to introduce legislation that would eliminate problems in the voting systems nationwide, which were exposed during last year's presidential election.
The seminar, sponsored by the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy and the department of political science, discussed last year's election and the electoral college yesterday afternoon at the Adams Alumni Center.
Stand Up For Life Week will continue tonight at 7:30 with Project Rachel: Dealing with Past Abortions, which will present testimonies of women who had abortions.
The group will also sponsor a rock concert featuring four bands tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 2206 E. 23rd, and will give out Stand Up For Life T-shirts on Friday at Wesco Beach.
— Edited by Melinda Weaver