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March 8, 2002 - Vol. 54, No. 34


Civil rights activist to visit Drake Wednesday

Civil rights activist and attorney Arthur Kinoy will speak about "The Role of a People's Lawyer" at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, in room 205 of Cartwright Hall.

The lecture and reception to follow are free and open to the public.

Kinoy, an emeritus professor of law at Rutgers University, is the author of Rights on Trial: The Odyssey of a People's Lawyer and co-founder of The Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit legal and educational organization that fights to protect rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Kinoy has been involved in some of the most memorable cases in American legal history, including the death penalty appeal of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; the defense of union workers at the McCarthy hearings; the defense of the "Chicago Seven" anti-war demonstrators; and U.S. vs. U.S. District Court, a Supreme Court decision striking down President Richard Nixon's claim of "executive privilege" for warrantless electronic surveillance of political "enemies."

Drake Law School's chapter of The National Lawyer's Guild and The Constitutional Law Center are sponsoring the lecture.

From left: Catherine Gillespie, Jim Romig, Anne Murr, Ron Morden, Gary Palmer, Kay Alcantar, Leo Hough, Madelyn Levitt, Dolph Pulliam and President David Maxwell pose with a giant check for $25,366.
Drake Literacy Center receives grant from Prairie Meadows

The Drake Literacy Center has received a $25,366 Community Betterment Grant from Prairie Meadows Racetrack and

Casino. The money will be used to provide certified training for volunteer tutors and to purchase instructional materials for clients, tutors and the center's library.
"This grant will give us the means to help children and adults whose deepest desire is to learn to read better," said Anne Murr, supervisor of the literacy center. "It will have a major impact on many lives."

The center, located in the School of Education, serves 55 adults and 15 of their children. "We always need more tutors," Murr said. To volunteer, call Murr at x3982.
Sen. Harkin to speak at banquet, conduct panel discussion

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, will give the keynote address at Drake University Law School's Supreme Court Banquet Saturday, March 9 at the Downtown Marriott. Harkin's speech is titled "The Value of Community."

"The Law School is honored to have Senator Harkin give the keynote address at its annual Supreme Court Banquet," said Law School Dean C. Peter Goplerud III.

The banquet, which starts at 6 p.m., is the culmination of the law school's 65th annual Supreme Court Celebration, a week in which the state's Supreme Court is honored by faculty, students, alumni and the legal community. Three of the state's seven Supreme Court justices, including Chief Justice Louis A. Lavorato, are alumni of the Drake Law School.

Highlights of the evening include recognition of student leaders, student trial advocacy competitors and alumni who have contributed to the success of the school.

Harkin also will attend a roundtable discussion on financial aid and the affordability of higher education with students from Drake and six other area colleges and universities at 2:30 p.m. today (Friday, March 8). The discussion, with approximately 15 students, will take place in conference room 310 in Olmsted Center. Drake Student Body President Matt Elliott will moderate the event.

The purpose of the discussion is for Harkin to learn how students and their families are handling college expenses and how they have been affected by the economic slowdown and state budget cuts.
Wanted: IPTV Festival volunteers

Drake University volunteers will be answering phones and taking pledges during two nights of the Friends of Iowa Public Television Festival this year.
Volunteers are needed to work from 6 p.m. to midnight Sunday, March 17, at the IPTV studio in Johnston. Volunteers receive a free dinner and Drake T-shirt. At least 10 more volunteers are needed. To volunteer, call Lisa Lacher at x3119 or send an e-mail message to lisa.lacher@drake.edu.

Students in Ronda Menke's Public Relations Campaigns class will be volunteering from 6 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday, March 12. "Because IPTV is our campaigns client, we wanted to help and get an insider's perspective on festival," said Menke, associate professor of journalism and mass communication. "It's also a good lesson on fundraising, telethons and relationship-building for PR majors."
Choral Concert set for Tuesday

Following a tour of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, the Drake Choir will present its free home concert at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, on the Jordan Stage in Sheslow Auditorium. The program will feature works by Samuel Barber, Randall Thompson, Anton Bruckner and Jules Massenet, as well as vocal jazz and a comic piece by Kansas City composer Jean Belmont.

The choir also will perform for the American Choral Directors Association North Central Division convention at 2:45 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines. Tickets, available at the door, are $10. Choirs selected to perform at an ACDA conference must submit audition tapes containing samples of the ensemble's performance for the three years preceding the conference. Only 22 choirs, four of which are college/university ensembles, were selected for this year's conference.
Law mock trial team wins regional competition

Drake University Law School's mock trial team placed first in the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA) Mock Trial regional competition winning a berth at the national title.
The team is comprised of third-year law students Gary Dickey Jr. of Des Moines, Constance Grignon of West Des Moines, Paul Love of Houston and William Schultz of Fergus Falls, Minn. They defeated Creighton to win the regional title and advance to nationals held in Chicago March 21-24.

"To win the tournament, these students showed remarkable poise in a bitterly fought final round against a very talented team from Creighton," said coach Jeff Noble.
The structure of the regional competition involves three preliminary rounds with the top four teams advancing to a single elimination tournament. The Drake team of Dickey, Grignon, Love and Schultz not only won all three preliminary rounds, but also outscored 15 other teams three consecutive times.

The ATLA Mock Trial Competition is an inter-law-school trial advocacy competition sponsored by the American Trial Lawyers Association.

The Drake Law mock trial teams are coached by Jeff Noble, a 1990 Drake Law alumnus, Chuck Kenville, and student coach Nekeidra Tucker.
Drake libraries select Link system

Drake University has selected Sirsi Corp.'s Link system to provide state-of-the-art service in its main and law libraries. Link is configured especially for academic and research libraries.

"After careful consideration," said Dean of Libraries Rod Henshaw, "we decided that the Link system provided the range of capabilities we were seeking to further enhance library services for students and faculty ó not only on campus, but also through a single interface providing both Web-based and Internet access to the library catalog. This system also provides strong research library support to serve the needs of Drake's fast-growing enrollment in Web-based distance learning courses."

Planning and implementation for this migration is currently under way with the goal of "going live" in mid-June.

Link, the academic division of SIRSI's Unicorn, focuses solely on the needs of academic and research libraries. It consists of a suite of full-function software for circulation services, technical services and digital library staff. The components of Link will provide easy-to-use navigation, powerful search capabilities, links to indexes and electronic journals, and the ability to follow links within the catalog to find additional books and other materials. Another Link component will offer an Amazon.com-type interface, allowing patrons access to enhanced graphical content such as book jacket summaries, reviews and tables of contents. Students and faculty also will be able to create their own unique online scholar's portal, complete with individualized and customizable features such as subject-oriented websites, and current research topics.
Writer to speak at Drake March 28

The Drake Writers and Critics Series will present an evening with fiction writer and poet Steven Coyne at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28, in the Medbury Honors Lounge.

Coyne, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Denver and an M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has his work included in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2001. His poetry and short stories have been published in journals such as The North American Review, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review and The Mid-America Poetry Review. He also has won numerous awards, including first prize in the Mississippi Review Fiction Contest and the Prairie Schooner Reader's Choice Award for Fiction.

Photojournalist to give speech on domestic violence Tuesday

Vera Anderson, photojournalist and author of A Woman Like You: The Face of Domestic Violence, will speak about domestic abuse at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, in Bulldog Theater at Olmsted Center. Her speech , which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Student Activities Board in observance of Women's History Month.

Anderson's book contains compelling portraits of 34 battered women and their stories. The book won the 1998 Small Press Book Award, and she is now working on a second book on the same subject. She has been a photojournalist since 1975 and now serves as Los Angeles bureau chief of the Latin American Cine Premiere Magazine.
From left: Jacque Gerlovich, Tara Tornabane, Sarah Brown, Colleen Buchanan, Amy Hash, Allison Vermie and Catherine Heger take a break from their duties at the Physics Olympics.
Students go for the gold in coordinating Physics Olympics

Approximately 150 physics students from 12 central Iowa high schools competed in the Heartland Area Education Agency/Drake University Physics Olympics on Feb. 20.

The event was planned, coordinated and judged by Jack Gerlovich, professor of education at Drake, and seven Drake students: Sarah Brown, a senior secondary education major from St. Louis; Colleen Buchanan, a graduate education student from Des Moines; Jacque Gerlovich, a junior elementary education major from Waukee; Amy Hash, a junior elementary education major from Columbus, Neb.; Catherine Heger, a graduate education student from Des Moines; Tara Tornabane, a graduate education student from Des Moines; and Allison Vermie, a junior elementary education major from Urbandale.

"The Drake team has been so effective in hosting the event that we have been asked to coordinate both the central Iowa and state competition events for next year," professor Gerlovich said.

The Physics Olympics consists of a series of six events testing the students' ingenuity, their understanding of physics-related principles and their construction skills. All local television stations covered the competition, which was held in Parents Hall at Olmsted Center.

Individual event teams and overall first- and second-place teams will advance to the state competition at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids on April 20.

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