COLLEGE SHORTS

Author: JASON F. SIEGEL

Students protest Confederate flag

On Saturday afternoon, approximately 20 Louisiana State University (LSU) students held a protest against the flying of the Confederate flag during a football game.

Accompanied by approximately 20 police officers, the protesters followed the lead of the LSU chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which called for a ban on the flag last week, claiming the flag represents racism. Police guardians reported no dangerous or threatening responses to the march.

Students expected a more vocal response, given that the time of the protest was in the early afternoon, when the tailgaters had had a lot to drink. A visiting student from Dillard University who participated in the demonstration, and was also President of the Dillard chapter of the NAACP, stated that she heard some profane remarks directed at the protesters.

The outside march ended as the doors opened up to the stadium, and some protesters with tickets took their seats. They sat by the tunnel where players enter and exit, holding up anti-Confederate-flag signs as the players passed by. The athletes did not overtly make reference to the protesters.

"They oppose us for this, but then they will watch the black players play," first-year student David Kador said. "We have to do this to stand for what we believe."



Misused cadavers threaten program

Charges of improper use of cadavers donated to the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) put the willed body program in jeopardy, but a recent court decision indicates it may not be dead yet.

The University recently won a 1996 lawsuit charging that cremated remains of donors to the program were not sprinkled in a rose garden as promised, but distributed in a landfill instead. Future donors also sued in the same case to ensure that their bodies would not meet the same fate. The judge cited a lack of evidence as grounds for dismissal.

The program was once again the source of controversy last year when the director was arrested on charges of illegally selling body parts for profit. This prompted yet another lawsuit, still pending, and the program was suspended until further notice.

UCLA plans to revive the program as soon as the court allows. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday to determine if the University can continue the program during the litigation. Plaintiffs in the first case support a reopening, in large part because the program helped create some of the new security regulations in place.

-U-Wire



U. Iowa under fire

for previous study

A study from 1939 may be the subject of an upcoming lawsuit against the University of Iowa, as a group of participants recently won a court hearing in front of the state Supreme Court giving them the right to sue.

The "Monster Study," as researchers nicknamed it, told ordinary, stutter-less orphans that they in fact had a stutter. This caused them not only to start to stutter, but also to lose self-esteem. Though the participants had forgotten about the study, a 2001 report in the San Jose Mercury News made them aware that it had been done. The state is currently pushing for the state Supreme Court to rehear the matter. University officials assert that stricter ethical guidelines have been in place since the 1970s.

- U-Wire