UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday. January 27.1997
3A
KU student denied stay of deportation
By Nicholas C. Charalambous
Kansan staff writer
KU student Hamel Mesfun, jailed for more than two months while awaiting deportation to Ethiopia, was so desperate for U.S. officials to decide his future that he went on a three-day hunger strike in early January and threatened last week to do so again.
Officials now may be one step closer to sealing his fate. The Immigration and Naturalization Service said Friday that it would not grant Mesfin a stay of deportation. And the U.S. Immigration judge, who has the authority to reopen his case for political asylum, is expected to rule this week.
The Kansas City, Mo.
junior, known to his friends as Mamoosh, had been held at the Clinton (Mo.) County Jail since Nov. 16 after INS agents arrested him for an expired visa.
"There are times when I am hopeful, but most of the time it is utter darkness that I am facing. I feel caught up in red tape," Mesfin said before the INS decision.
Mesfin's attorney, Roger McCrummen, said that the INS decision practically was moot because the Ethiopian government had not provided travel documents to enable deportation, he said.
"If he had a passport, he would have been deported before he even had a chance to hire me." McCrummen said.
Mesfin was moved Thursday to an INS long-term holding facility in El Paso, Texas, where he could stay for up to four months if travel
documents do not come through.
Mesfin could not be reached for comment after his move to Texas. He had complained that he was treated as though he was a criminal at the Clinton County Jail, and refused food and water for three days beginning Jan. 9. Mesfin decided to end the hunger strike after paramedics were called to treat him for exhaustion.
McCrummen said that Mesfin appeared to be more comfortable at the new location.
"He seemed to be in fairly good spirits," he said.
But the move signals that the INS doesn't think the case will be resolved quickly, McCrummen said.
The immigration judge would likely grant a stay of deportation, if he were going to recommend that Mesfin's application for political asylum be reopened, McCrummen said.
Mesfin, who came to the United States in 1988, had his application for political asylum rejected in 1992.
"Popular opinion is that it would be denied because these cases are rarely reopened," McCrummen said.
If the motion to reopen Mesfin's case is denied, McCrummen said that he would take the case to the Board of Immigration appeals.
Mesfin said that he led protests against the government when he lived in Ethiopa and would face persecution as a political dissident if he were deported.
According to human rights organizations, Mesfin's fears may be justified. Hundreds of critics and opponents of the government last year were detained without charge or imprisoned following unfair trials, said Roger Rathman, an media director at the New York office of Amnesty International.
By Mark McMaster
Kansan staff writer
Communications class heads to cyberspace to learn technology
Trying to find the new classroom for this semester's COMS 620 class might be difficult. Because it is not in a campus building.
It's in cyberspace.
The classroom is conveniently located for the course's focus: new technologies in communication.
Howard Sypher, professor of communication studies who teaches the course with Scott McWilliams, graduate assistant, built the classroom in a virtual office building shared with three other universities, which offers similar courses.
Programmers at the University of Illinois created the software, called Network Place, needed to explore the building on the Internet. Classes at Illinois, Michigan State and the University of Arizona are also creating classrooms in the building.
Students can enter their own classrooms by providing a password. Once inside, faculty and students communicate through text messages.
Students also have the opportunity to interact outside of class.
"They'll be able to work in teams on computer-mediated projects with people they don't know and won't meet face-to-face," he said. "It gives them a feel for what telecommunicating is like."
"There's a coffee room, a sort of chat room, where students can discuss socially what their classes are like and what is going on," Sypher said.
Sypher said students will work with students from other cooperating universities.
Students or instructors can reach the classroom through any computer equipped with a basic level of hardware, the special software, and an internet connection.
Sypher said that this is an advantage because it allows guest lecturers to appear before the class without travel expenses and makes it easy for students to attend class no matter where they are.
Students in Professor Howard Sypher's COMS 620 class meet in a virtual classroom created in cyberspace. The class studies new technologies in communication.
Sypher is no stranger to teaching online. Last semester, his COMS 620 class created another virtual classroom in a different environment called Alpha World.
Alpha World is a more graphic, 3-D environment designed to resemble a real city. Unlike the Network Place setting, it is open to the public. Its nearly 100,000 users, or virtual residents, are represented by humanlike figures called avatars. The avatars are
visible to other residents, walk from place to place within Alpha World and even show emotion.
The classroom, which looks like a patio with neon umbrellas providing virtual shade, will continue to be used this semester.
"They'll learn the way communication theories apply in the realm of technologies and get a basic understanding of a whole host of new technologies," he said.
McWilliams said that working in environments such as Alpha World and Network Place helps students grasp a technology that will shape the future of communication.
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