Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan / Monday, January 29, 1990
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Festival celebrates new year
Cheng Wu, Taipei, Taiwan, graduate student, plays a pipa at the Chinese New Year celebration.
Gratchen Ploegenger/KANSAN
By Ines Shuk
Kansas staff writer
East Asia was wearing a festive red this weekend.
People, houses, marketplaces and streets from Tibet to Taiwan, were shining in red — the color of fortune, luck and happiness — because Friday was the last day of the lunar calendar.
Jan. 26 was New Year's Eve for about 1.78 billion people in at least 14 countries, or roughly one-third of the world's population. It is the most celebrated of all East Asian holidays.
Agnes Syu, Taiwan graduate teaching assistant and Chinese Student Association consultant, said her group had an open New Year's Spring Festival dinner Saturday at the Lawrence Community Center. Members of the association prepared about 15 Chinese specialities such as fried rice, fried noodles, stir-fried vegetables, egg rolls, corn soup, smiling fried dumplings and other treats
About 250 people attended. "Most of the guests were Chinese, but there were also Americans and people from other nationalities," Syu said.
The party continued with a dance at the Kansas Room in the Kansas Union. Svu said.
"The Chinese New Year is a moveable feast like our Easter," said Wallace Johnson, professor of East Asian languages and cultures. The celebration starts 15 days before the first full moon of the year.
This traditional holiday goes back about 5,000 years to the times of the legendary Yellow Emperor and usually falls in late January or early February.
F runy's celebration marked the end of the Year of the Snake and the beginning of the Year of the Horse. In Oriental mythology, the horse means looking ahead, advancement, moving forward, a year of progress and success, said Syu.
"On New Year's Eve, all the family gets together to worship our gods and ancestors. Later, we eat a special New Year's Eve dinner prepared by my mother," Sua said.
At midnight, people burn firecrackers, a symbol of leaving behind everything from the passing year, she said.
"My parents always prepare a new set of clothes for all their children and we wear them on New Year's Day," Syu said. "Since a new year will begin, everything must be new."
New Year's Eve is the opportunity for children to collect their biggest fortune of the paper — red envelopes full of paper money given by parents and senior relatives, Syu said.
After some time
"The next morning, children will wake up and look under their
pillows where their parents have put small sweet cakes wrapped in red paper to wish them 'to grow tall.'" she said.
The day is committed to visiting neighbors. On the second day, married people visit their parents' family, and on the third day, the family visits friends and other relatives, Syu said.
On the fifteenth day, which is the first full moon, the New Year's festivities end with the celebration of the Lantern Festival. Parks and temples are brightened with colorful paper lanterns.
Although New Year's is still the most eagerly awarded festival of East Asia, it varies from country to country and even from family to
Yheong Kwon Lee, graduate student and president of the Korean Student Association, said his family joined other Koreans on Saturday at Fort Leavenworth to celebrate the new year.
family within a nation, said Shu Yihwong, Malasya junior. "My family doesn't celebrate the Chinese New Year's," she said.
By Carol B. Shiney
Moving to a foreign country can be a shock to the body.
Kansan staff writer
"When I first came here, it was like going to Mars, to the moon. It was just very different," said Danny Yau, Malviasia junior.
Yau and eight other KU students attended a culture shock discussion Saturday morning in the International Room at the Kansas Union. The discussion was part of the Office of Foreign Student Services' peer advising program. More than 1,800 foreign students attend the University of Kansas.
Laura Emery, graduate assistant for the office, said culture shock was the adjustment to a new culture.
"There are certain symptoms that come along with adjusting to a new environment," she said.
In a video titled "Cold Water," one student from West Germany described how it felt to move to the United States: "... For me, it felt like jumping into the cold water."
Emery, who spent a year studying in Nice, France, led Saturday's discussion. She said symptoms of culinary burn were emotional as well as physical.
"For me, when I was in France, I didn't really feel it until the eighth month," she said.
Emery said that when she had experienced culture shock, she felt extreme loniness, questioned why she was there, and felt homesick and tired of struggling with the unfamiliar.
"Back home you're used to knowing how to do things," she said.
Moussa Sissoko, Mali graduate student, said he enrolled in an orientation program in Washington, D.C., when he came to the United States a little more than three years ago. He learned from the program what to
expect in the United States.
Physical problems were the only symptoms of culture shock he experienced.
"My body was reacting in a way that I couldn't explain," Sissoko said. "I went to the hospital and talked to many doctors and there was nothing
He said he later realized that what he was experiencing was culture shock. Exercise helped, he said.
By exercising, I really felt good and my body was no longer doing those things." Sissoko said.
those things. Another program that can help foreign students make the adjustment is the host family program, sponsored by the Office of Foreign Student Services.
"The host family program is really good because it provides support, and it gives them a surrogate family to be with." Emery said. "They do get close and do a lot of things and get exposed to the culture."
Harry Bradford of Lawrence is a host to foreign students. He said that many times the students came to his house and fixed dinner.
"In the dorms, they don't get the kind of food they're used to," he said. "We tell them, 'Sure, you can come over and fix it, and we'll help you eat it.'"
Bradford and his wife, Kay, have been hosts to about 37 students during the past 13 years. The Bradfords said they had noticed some of the culture shock symptoms.
"There are some adjustments that they have to make," Harry Bradford said. "One of the big things is that they are homesick."
The Bradfords said they enjoyed helping the foreign students.
"It's fun," said Kay Bradford. "We're supposed to be helping them, but I think we get a lot more out of it."
After hiatus, Haskell students start up the presses again
Kansan staff writer
By Mark McHugh
For the first time, the Indian Leader, Haskell Indian Junior College's student paper, will begin publishing on a set schedule.
The Indian Leader had been suspended when paper and student government finances were frozen by the administration after an article in October 1988 that criticized former college President Gerald Gipp.
A court case began March 30, 1989, when the Indian Leader Association, the student group that publishes the Leader, filed a lawsuit to block publication of what students called a faculty version of the student paper. The issue was resolved in an out-of-court settlement in September 1989 between the college and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which gave publishing rights to the students.
Hannes Combest, faculty adviser for the paper, said the paper would have a regular printing schedule beginning today. She said the first 1990 issue of the Leader would include the semester printing schedule.
"Printing the publication schedule is one of the most positive things we've done," she said.
Mark Randolph, who became editor in early December, said few changes had been made to the paper's format.
"This semester, we're just trying to get on our feet," he said.
Combeset said there were no hard feelings toward the paper's lack of production last semester.
Randolph said the paper would be distributed today on campus.
Kansan staff writer
By Sandra Moran
Michelle Benoit, second-year KU law student, spends 10 to 12 hours each week in prison.
Benoit is one of 17 law students who work with inmates at Leavenworth and Lansing penitentiaries and the Defender Project, of Law's Defender Project.
"We petition with the court on any grounds they have, whether it be ineffectiveness of council, or we
might challenge the search if they were convicted of drugs," Benoit said.
Project director Kim Dayton said the program was established in 1965. The students primarily practice civil law and deal with inmates who have already been convicted.
"We just look at the defenses that they had when they were convicted."
at the trial level," Dayton said. "What we do principally, in connection with their conviction, is challenge the circumstances.
"We're not representing people
"A lot of times, people misperceive the function of a defense attorney. It's not to get someone off who is guilty. It's to insure that the guilty person, just as a faceless innocent person, has all their rights."
Dayton said the students did not take cases dealing with bankruptcy, contested divorces, custody battles or money damages against prison officials.
"We have some limitations, but that doesn't stop us from taking a huge variety of cases," she said.
Before students can work with the project, they must complete their first year of law school, Dayton said. After working for two semesters, some students are permitted to return with an option of credit or in a paid position.
Most interns have six or seven cases a semester. In addition, each student is required to represent an inmate at a parole hearing.
"We have a very substantial case list," Dayton said. "There are so many books, and the list has been as high as 85 cases for Leavenworth and 25 for Lansing."
Benoit said that sometimes she was overwhelmed by the cases.
"It's really opened my eyes to a lot of things that I probably would
never see," she said. "We see a lot of mothers and wives and children that are visiting with their husbands.
“It's just something that you just don't ever really think of. You always just think of people in prison, but you don't think of people that are outside the prison.”
Dayton said she thought the program gave the students a more balanced perspective of the judicial system.
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