MONDAY,FEBRUARY 26,1996
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS 864-4810
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING 864-4358
SECTION A VOL.102 NO.104
TODAY KANSAN
SPORTS
Final home game
Rock Chalk results
The Kansas women's basketball team cut down Kansas State and the nets yesterday.Page 1B
CAMPUS
NATION
Participants raised $29,000 and donated more than 30,000 hours to charity. Page 3A
Buchanan letters show fear
Fund-raising letters sound a warning for the Republican Party. Page 11A
WORLD
Fighter planes shot down
Four people are missing; President Clinton blames the Cuban government. Page 10A
WEATHER CLOUDY
High 60° Low 47°
Weather: Page 2A.
INDEX
Opinion . . . . . . 4A
Nation/World. . . . 10A
Features . . . . . 12A
Scoreboard . . . 2B
Horoscopes . . . 10B
The University Daily Kansan is the student newspaper of the University of Kansas. The first copy is paid through the student activity fee. Additional copies of the Kansan are 25 cents.
'We want Whatley'
Senior forward J.T. Whatter walked onto the Kansas men's basketball team in the 1992-93 season and became a crowd favorite. Tonight he will play in his final game in Allen Field House.
The man. The mystique. The moustache.
Story by Scott MacWilliams
By Scott MacWilliams Kansan staff writer
Roy Williams is fuming. With just more than two minutes left in the first half against Colorado on Valentine's Day, the Jayhawks are flat.
Number 14?
They need a lift. Who will get the call? Williams surveys the bench. He calls for number 14.
After four long years of riding the far north end of the Jayhawks' bench, four long years of practicing, lifting weights, running and being the walk-on role player in practice, four years of being the guy who gets in the game only when the Jayhawks are 20 points ahead with one minute left, Thomas Jerrell Whatley, Jr., is getting the call.
In the first half.
As the walk-on senior runs from the scorer's table onto the court, the Allen Field House crowd erupts like a volcano. Fists are pumping. Even in the usually sedate, reserved seats, fans leap to their feet. High fives explode all around.
We are entering the Jayhawk field of dreams, where a blue collar kid from rural Arkansas can soar among the stars, where anyone can go out there and play with
the legends.
Finally, it is Whatley time.
The Glen Rose, Ark, engineering student and senior guard, who pays his own way to KU, counters every stereotype about athletes, glitz and college basketball egos that leave for the pros at the first sly wink of an agent. When he takes the home court for the last time tonight against Missouri, he'll retire his spot in the Roy Williams line of hard-working bench warmers. And, unless Williams changes his senior tradition, Whatley will, in one last crystalline moment, start for the Kansas men's basketball team.
In the Colorado game, Williams knew Whatley would get both the stands and the bench fired up. Whatley said he didn't have time to be nervous. He just went in.
"In practice I play against what I consider the No. 1 team in the country every day of the week," Whatley said. "I just went in there and said to myself, 'These guys can't be any better than the guys I practice against.' So, I just played hard."
When Whatley scored and drew a foul, Allen Field House responded with a standing ovation. Starting forward Raef LaFrentz hopped up and down like he on a huge pogo stick.
Photos by Matt Flickner
The television announcers named Whatever player of the game. He was even featured on ESPN's SportsCenter that night.
"I watch SportsCenter every day," Whatley said. "But to see your own face on there, that's a pleasant surprise. I talked to my folks last night, and they were somewhat pleased."
"We were just going nuts here," said Peggy Whatley, T.J.'s mother. "I think I'm going to have to get a new La-Z-Boy recliner because I shredded ours so bad."
Whatley tends to understate things. That's the way they do it down in the Arkansas pine woods. Actually, his parents said they couldn't be prouder.
She said that the next day at Glen Rose High, where she teaches art, everyone was talking about Whatley's surprise early entrance in the Colorado game.
"Our principal was telling everyone that he tape it if anyone missed it," Peggy Whatley said. "We were some kind of excited around here."
SportsCenter is a long way from Glen Rose, Ark., where Whatley grew up in a comfortable home, with a shaded front porch, nestled
Glen Rose Boy
in the pine-covered hills 35 miles southeast of Little Rock. Peggy and Jerry Whatley personally built their two-story house while living in a mobile home about 30 yards away.
"We've been living in it 14 years and it isn't finished yet," Peggy Whatley said. "But we keep adding on, a carport one year, and a front porch the next. It's kind of one of those endless projects."
In the Kansas basketball media guide, Whatley listed his father as the person he admired most.
"When I was little and would miss a shot, Dad would swat the ball down the hill." Whatley said. "I'd get a real workout chasing that ball clear down there."
Jerry Whatley had been an engineer for 10 years at International Paper before he got tired of moving. He quit to farm and to teach math and physics at Glen Rose High, where his wife also teaches.
The discipline paid off.
Whattey finished his high school
Whatley learned to play basketball with his dad on a goal mounted on a wooden pole atop the hill beside the house. There is a rock driveway under the basket, and a grassy backcourt slopes down and away into a hollow.
See T.J., Page 9A.
Teams savor conference titles
The final chapter of the Big Eight Conference history book belongs to Kansas.
Kansan staff report
The men's team has dominated the Big Eight by winning five of the last six crowns. The women now can enjoy looking down on the rest of the conference.
The Jayhawk men's and women's basketball teams clinched the last conference championships outright during the weekend.
"We wanted everyone in the conference to hate both Kansas teams," Kansas junior guard Angie Halbleib said. "I
The Jayhawks' championships mark just the fourth time in conference history that one school has claimed both outright. Kansas did it one other time in 1992.
think they do now."
The championship weekend became that much sweeter, because both teams defeated in-state rival Kansas State.
The winning got under way Saturday. The men defeated the Wildcats 77-66 with junior guard Jacque Vaughn leading the way with 20 points. The women defeated their opponent 66-56 with junior guard Tamecka Dixon scoring 20 points.
Speaker decries racism
By Susanna Löof
Kansan staff writer
"All white people born, schooled and raised in the United States of America are racist," she said during her 2 1/2 hour presentation at the Lied Center yesterday afternoon. The speech was sponsored by SUA and the departments of housing, psychology and sociology.
Jane Elliott is a racist.
She said the myths of white supremacy that dominate American culture had conditioned her and all other whites to be racist.
"I know I am a racist, but I don't have to live as a racist," she said. "I can overcome it."
About 400 people attended Ellott's speech, which addressed
several topics dealing with inequality in today's society. One topic was education. To demonstrate inequality in education, she showed a map of the world similar to maps used in most classrooms. She pointed out that the equator divided the map so that two-thirds of the map was above it and one-third below it. She also pointed out that Greenland looked bigger than South America even though South America in reality is nine times larger than Greenland.
(USPS 650-640)
"This is bad teaching, people," she said. "You need to be aware of it." Elliot is famous for an experiment she performed on her third-grade class in Riceville. Iowa immediately
See Flashm, Page 2A
The cost of keeping fit
Per-semester student recreation center fee:
$90
Local fitness centers' price per semester:
(All packages include full use of gym and aerobics classes unless stated otherwise.)
New Life Family Fitness Center
$145
Alvamar Nautilus Fitness Center
$96.21*
Lawrence Athletic Club
$139
Total Fitness Center
$128
Body Boutique (Women Only)
$120
Noah Musser/KANSAN
Rec fee less than club dues
By Nicole Kennedy
Kansan staff writer
The proposed $90-a-semester recreation center fee may seem expensive, but it's actually a bargain compared to area health club prices.
Semester-long student membership at five Lawrence health clubs average $36 more than the proposed recreation center fee.
And the five area health clubs offer only some of the services that the recreation center would provide.
Though the proposed recreation center would not offer saunas, whirlpools or racquetball courts, it would have aerobics classes, cardiovascular equipment, a combative arts room, an indoor track, a rock-climbing wall and seven gymnasium courts.
Beverly Smith, a trainer at New Life Family Fitness Center, 2500 W. 6th St., said her club offered aerobics classes, cardiovascular equipment, one racquetball court, two free-weight rooms, saunas and whirlpools. A per-semester student membership to the New Life Center costs $145.
Mary Chappel, recreation services director, said the proposed recreation center would offer students more opportunities to workout and socialize with friends than area health clubs now offered because every student would be a member.
Chappel also said transportation would not be a major concern for students using the recreation center. This sometimes has been a problem for students who use health clubs.
The center's West Campus location would be on the bus route and still would be close to student housing areas, Chappel said.
"Everyone has to make a decision on what product or service they choose," Chappel said. "It just seems to be a better fit."
"It may be less here because everybody is paying into this big pot," said Jason Fizell, Olathe junior. "It's more fair for those who use it to pay."
However, some students who oppose the recreation center said that although the fee increase would be cheaper than most health club memberships it still would be unfair to some students.
Shannon Tauscher, Lawrence junior, agreed.
"Why should I subsidize their health club?" she said.
Tauscher and Fizell said that a group they had organized to oppose the recreation center planned to solicit money from area health clubs to help pay for its campaign against the recreation center.
"We didn't want people to think that we were some sort of puppet for them, but we realize that they have a vested interest in this and that we need funding." Fizell said.
A student referendum on the recreation center will be held tomorrow and Wednesday. Voting sites include Robinson Gymnasium, Strong Hall, the Kansas Union, the Burge Union and Wescoe Hall.