One student dead, five
hospitalized after fire sweeps
through Murray State dorm
College Press Exchange
MURRAY, Ky. (CPX) - One
student was killed and five were
injured after a fire ravaged the
fourth floor of a dormitory at
Murray State University early
Friday.
It was the second fire in a week
to strike the eight-story residence
hall, and university officials told
the Associated Press that the latest
blaze was intentionally set.
However, they would not say if
Friday’s fire was related to a
smaller one that broke out on the
same floor on Sept. 13.
Michael Minger, 19, of
Student authors consider legal
action against lona College
By Christine Tfctum
College Press Exchange
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y.
(CPX) - Students at lona College
are debating First Amendment
rights with school officials who
insist the law supported their
decision to confiscate the school’s
literary magazine and delete all or
part of three poems.
In a statement released Sept
30, the college said its opinion is
“consistent with the tradition of the
Christian brothers, Catholic higher
education and relevant law.” The
school also said its policy is to ban
indecency from student
publications.
Only days before the end of the
last school year, lona confiscated
380 copies of the magazine because
it contained “offensive” and
“totally inappropriate” writing,
lona President Brother James
Liguori said. Two poems containing
profanity were removed from the
magazine. A third Containing a
sexually explicit word "was edited
but allowed to remain.
lona students have complained
that the magazine was altered
without a recommendation from
the college’s media board, which is
composed of students, faculty and
administrators. One student author
said her work was altered without
her permission - and after she had
Professor combines undersea
salvage with history of slavery
By Sandra Tan
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
HAMPTON, Va. - When
Hampton University aquatics
professor Erol Duplessis first ran into
Mel Fisher in 1984, he had no reason
to believe a word the man said.
Fisher, a treasure hunter, said he
was in Florida to work on the salvage
operation of the Atocha, a Spanish
galleon that sunk off the Florida Keys
in 1622 with a fortune in gold and
silver.
“I was saying to myself, ‘Yeah,
right,’” recalled Duplessis.
But the professor listened
carefully when he heard Fisher say he
had also found the remnants of a slave
ship in the midst of his search for the
Atocha.
It would be a few more months
before news of the Spanish galleon
discovery broke worldwide, and
Duplessis found himself reconsidering
Fisher’s credibility.
He did some cursory research
about the slave ship that Fisher
discovered, the Henrietta Marie,
which sunk 35 miles southwest of Key
West in the summer of 1700. It was
the first slave ship to be discovered
off the coast of the Americas and one
of only seven discovered in the world.
Duplessis then decided he wanted
to visit the site himself.
In November 1993, he and
another professor, as well as five HU
students sponsored by the university,
made the trip to the slave ship’s wreck
at New Ground Reef off the
Marquesas Keys.
Duplessis will talk about the
experience tonight at Nauticus, where
artifacts from the wreck are now on
display
Niceville, Fla., died in the second
fire. One of the five students
injured in the blaze, 21-year-old
Michael Priddy of Paducah, Ky.,
was flown to Vanderbilt University
Medical Center in Nashville with
severe burns on his arms and back.
He was listed in critical but stable
condition on Monday. Four other
students were hospitalized locally,
and 10 more were treated at the
scene.
All of the 300 students living
in the dormitory were evacuated.
The university is housing them in
local hotels, empty rooms on
campus and by converting single
rooms into doubles.
been assured the piece would run
School officials have said they
could not muster a quorum of the
media board because the conflict
occurred during final exams. They
also said the private school, acting
as publisher of the magazine, had
the right to change the magazine in
any way it saw fit
“Even if the school had the
authority to do something like this,
it’s hard not to say this was
educationally backwards,” said
Mark Goodman, director of the
Student Press Law Center in
Washington, D.C. “It’s hard to
believe that in 1998 someone would
be shocked by the use of a vulgarity
in a literary publication. The school
is really naive to think it can have a
high-quality literary magazine and
not ever be confronted with this
issue.”
Goodman said students may
have a case against lona if the
school violated any written policies
stipulating that such editorial issues
would be settled by its media board.
“If the school in fact censored
a publication in conflict with its own
written policies, then it has
breached its agreement,” Goodman
said. “If a school agrees to do
something through a policy or
student handbook code, then it is
legally bound as if that was a
contract.”
The dive did run into a few
obstacles, Duplessis said.
“The visibility was so poor, and
the current was so strong,” he
recalled. “I was more worried about
the current.”
Fortunately for the HU group, the
National Association of Black Scuba
Divers had visited the spot a few
months earlier and mounted a plaque
on a two-ton piece of concrete to mark
the spot.
The plaque read, “Henrietta
Marie - In memory and recognition
of the courage, pain and suffering of
enslaved African people.”
Duplessis’ diving team hooked a
line from their boat to the monument,
giving the team members an easy
guide to the wreck site. The group
collected data and took video footage
of the dive.
“I wanted to see if it was the kind
of reef that could cause a ship to
crash,” Duplessis said. “It was not.”
The professor said he believes the
ship probably struck the shoals, the
more shallow reefs, of the Marquesas
Keys, then drifted and eventually
sank. Others believe the ship was
wrecked in a storm.
According to research that has
been done on the ship and its voyage,
slaves were probably not on board at
the time because they had already
been delivered and sold in Jamaica.
However, Duplessis said his research
on the unusual location of the wreck
suggests the ship may have also been
making a side trip to Cuba to sell more
slaves.
At the completion of the diving
expedition, the HU group visited the
Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage
Museum in Key West and looked at
other slave ship artifacts kept in the
National Campus News
MTV reporter studies the
appeal, perils of porn
By Thomas Huang
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Tabitha Soren, the MTV reporter
who once got Bill Clinton to reveal
his favorite Rolling Stone and Beatle
- Mick and Paul - is back at the
network after a year at Stanford
University.
She’s already in the thick of
things. She has been watching people
have sex.
“With condoms,” she says. To
examine the pornography industry,
she spent several days on movie sets
in California’s San Fernando Valley,
chatting up young actors and
watching them work.
Occupational hazards have
forced the actors to take precautions.
“In the last six months, they’ve had
five HIV cases,” she says by phone
from New York. “The industry really
reacted to that.”
Such is the state of porn in the
age of AIDS. That’s not all the 31-
year-old journalist discovered - as she
reveals in “I Am a Porn Star,” a 90-
minute MTV special that airs
Wednesday.
The documentary, which Soren
co-produced, is the latest in MTV
News’ “True Life” series. The series
focuses on the concerns and real lives
of young people.
“The biggest consumer of porn
is between 20 and 30 years old,” she
says. “The people who are on camera,
as well as those writing, producing
and directing (porn), are between 18
and 30.”
The porn crowd is an
increasingly young set - right up
MTV’s alley. What’s driving that
demographic trend? Soren points to a
troubling phenomenon.
“Our society is so caught up in
being famous and young people
measure their self-worth by how
famous they are, how famous they
might be,” she says. “The porn world
is another way for young people to
get attention. In the industry they’re
That was enough to convince
Duplessis that he needed to know
more. Following the trip, he spent two
weeks at the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture. There, he
said, he studied the history of the slave
trade from 1685 to 1715.
“Once I understood what slavery
really meant, that’s when it really
impacted me,” Duplessis said,
referring to the great sadness he felt
in learning how structured the slave
trade was and how brutally some
slaves were captured.
“If you are Jewish, would you
want to know about the Holocaust?”
he asked. “If you’re black, would you
want to know about slavery? You
want to know that because you never
want that to happen again.”
He is not the only one to be
moved by his understanding of this
dark period in history. Many of the
visitors to the Nauticus exhibit in
Norfolk this past weekend have been
similarly affected, said Sheila
Harrison, marketing manager for the
center.
“We have seen people cry,” she
Attendance at the exhibit’s
opening weekend was almost triple
what it normally is this time of year,
with nearly 2,000 visitors arriving,
Harrison said.
“The response has been
tremendous,” she said. “People said,
‘l’ve waited two years for the
exhibit.’”
But not everyone wants to be
reminded of the past.
Duplessis once applied to a
graduate program and shared his
research interests in the Henrietta
Marie and the slave trade with other
graduate school candidates. He said
he was later approached by a
professor there who told him, “You’re
the one who wants to bring slavery
back.”
While some people, both black
and white, would prefer not to look
back, Duplessis said he believes it’s
important to learn from the past so the
same mistakes don’t get made in the
future.
treated as stars, flown everywhere.
“And they’re impatient about
making money quickly,” she says.
“They’re no different from the people
I’ve interviewed on Wall Street.” Mix
the love of the buck with the love of
the lurid and you’ve got a $4 billion
industry, she says. Americans rented
nearly 700 million X-rated videotapes
The biggest consumer of pom is between 20 and 30
years old. The people who are on camera, as well as
those writing, producing and directing (pom), are
between 18 and 30
last year.
“Our society is so drenched in
sex, from the Starr report to covers of
magazines where women’s shirts are
off,” she says. Young people’s
“tolerance for things that are sexual
is high because of advertising, music
and so many things coming at them.”
The documentary follows the
making of an adult video and profiles
a husband and wife who have
appeared in more than 100 films, a
veteran actress who was diagnosed as
HIV-positive this year and a young
actress on her first shoot.
Soren’s year at Stanford - where
she had a prestigious John S. Knight
Journalism Fellowship - helped her
frame the documentary. The
fellowships enable a select few
journalists to study whatever they
want. Soren, a San Antonio, Texas,
native whose military family moved
several times across the country and
overseas, decided to broaden her
liberal arts background.
She took several art history
classes, one in which a professor
“directed me to articles on the visual
vocabulary of sex and bodies,” she
says. On MTV, “we can’t show sex.
So how do you shoot this in a way
that is informative and so that people
Syracuse suspends fraternity
after pledge injured
By Ryan Van Winkle
Campus Correspondent-Syracuse
University
College Press Exchange
SYRACUSE, NY.
circumstances surrounding a Sigma
Chi pledge whose drunken stupor
landed him in the hospital have
prompted Syracuse University
officials to suspend the fraternity for
what they say could be another Greek
hazing incident.
While no charges have been filed
against Sigma Chi or the bar where
19-year-old Jonathan Robbins was
served alcohol, many students on
campus are asking whether anyone
other than Robbins should be held
responsible for his lapse in good
judgment.
Robbins had been passed out for
nearly 18 hours by the time his
roommate called for help on Friday.
His blood-alcohol content was .46 -
four times the legal driving limit and
dangerously close to death, university
spokesman Kevin Morrow said.
“His roommate probably saved his
life,” Morrow said.
According to police reports,
Robbins was seen drinking the night
The Beacon has special ad
rates for on-campus groups
will pay attention but not be
distracted? Artists and painters have
done this for years.”
She also studied literature,
reading everything from “The
Education of Henry Adams” to “The
Fire Next Time.” She tackled
Shakespearean plays. She took a
course on Ovid, the poet of ancient
Rome. Heady stuff. A life-changing
experience - so much so that she's
considering going to grad school.
That doesn’t surprise David
Sirulnick, 34, MTV News’ executive
vice president, who first met Soren
12 years ago when he worked at CNN
and she was an intern there. “It was
clear this was someone who was very
curious about everything and was not
going to be satiated with some of the
answers,” he says.
“In a smart way, she’s saying,
'l’ve got a lot of years to go. I want
to keep learning and moving on.’”
Soren worked at ABC News and
CNN when she was a journalism
student at New York University. After
graduation, she got a job as an anchor
and statehouse correspondent at a
Vermont TV station. Her 1992
presidential election coverage for
MTV helped the network win a
Peabody Award.
During the 1992 and 1996
campaigns, Soren interviewed
Clinton several times, as well as
George Bush, Bob Dole and Ross
Perot. Her voice grows angry and
emotional as she reflects on the
president’s affair with Monica
Lewinsky.
“I went to school with Chelsea
before with members of the fraternity
at a local sports bar popular with the
university’s Greeks. Fraternity
members drove him home and helped
him to bed. Robbins was hospitalized
the next day and released on Sunday.
University officials suspect Sigma
Chi - already on probation for other
violations of campus policies - played
a role in Robbins’ binge drinking.
Morrow said. As a result, the
fraternity could face expulsion - a fate
many Syracuse students are debating.
“He (Robbins) was stupid and is a
total idiot,” said Lyn Wimple, a 20-
year-old illustration major. “He
deserves what happened."
“That he was pledging a fraternity
gives the university a place to point
the finger,” said Lyle Shemer, a 21-
year-old advertising and marketing
major. “Maybe beneath this there is
areal issue about self-control and our
culture.”
And what if Robbins had been
drinking with a group of non-Greek
students, asked Sue Markert, a 21-
year-old magazine major who also
criticized the fraternity’s suspension.
“If a group of friends went out
drinking and this happened to one of
them, there is no way the university
Call 898-6488 for more information
Tabuha Soren, MTV reporter
for a year and I don’t understand how
you can forget how your behavior
would affect members of your family,"
she says. “It would really give me the
creeps if that were my father...”
“I do think we (the media) should
be covering this," she says. “You need
to be able to trust the president. What
kind of person would risk the hard
work of all those (staffers), who work
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
giving up time with their families,
killing themselves for this guy? And
he's jeopardizing it with a 22-year
old who’s come to Washington to
learn how government works.
“The capacity to do that is very
frightening. He’s so smart, so
educated. I thought he was intelligent
and this shows he’s not very
emotionally intelligent.”
For now, the days of covering
politicians are behind her. Soren is
focused on making long-form
documentaries that explore
subcultures in society, whether they be
pornographers or cadets at Virginia
Military Institute.
Her contract at MTV is up this
year but she says she’d be happy to
stay. “I feel like they’re family,” she
says. “I’ve grown up there.”
It’s not as if she’s a wizened 31-
year-old but she says that, as she’s
gotten older, she’s become less frenetic
about work. This week, she and her
husband, writer Michael Lewis, are
celebrating their first anniversary and
she’s staying away from the office.
“Anyone trying to have a life and
a career has to make sacrifices,” she
says. "But when I was younger, I
sacrificed the fun I was having outside
of work.
“Now I’m not willing to spend
four or five nights in a hotel room; I’m
not willing to fly to Wisconsin at the
drop of a hat. I’ve given up a little
credibility, reputation, prestige. But
I’m happier. I feel more fulfilled
because I’m pursuing other interests.
Journalism and news don’t take up 100
percent of my brain anymore.”
would punish the friends,” she said.
Nevertheless, some students say the
fraternity should accept some
responsibility for the incident -
regardless of whether hazing was
actually involved.
“The brothers are in a role of
responsibility,” said Jason Stefanik, a
20-year-old advertising and marketing
major. "If (Robbins) is in a bar,
underage, drinking with brothers, then
the fraternity must bear some of the
blame.”
Prosecutors in Massachusetts used
similar reasoning when they filed
charges of manslaughter and hazing
last week against Phi Gamma Delta in
connection with the 1997 binge
drinking death of MIT freshman Scott
Krueger. That fraternity is the first the
nation to face a manslaughter charge.
Fraternity members had left Krueger,
whose blood-alcohol content was .41,
passed out in a room at the fraternity
house during a raucous party. He died
two days later.
Syracuse authorities temporarily
closed the bar where Robbins was
served. While it is scheduled to re
open next week, it is still unclear
whether it will face charges in
connection with the drinking incident.