Western Front - 1998 May 8

              WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY VOLUME 104 ISSUE 11
FRIDAY
May 8, 1998
BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON
Multiple nm-offs Rec^Squar^ing^vitijjrayere
cause complaints
By Katherine Schiffner
The Western Front
The tumultuous elections
process appears to be finally over
with Sarah Steves winning the
second runoff election and the
Associated Students Board of
Directors rejecting disqualified
presidential candidate Caleb
Papineau's appeal.
Steves received 64.30 percent
of the 863 votes cast in
Wednesday's re-vote
against K.C.
Bodily to win the
election.
"I'm so relieved
it's over," Steves
said. "I'm ecstatic
about starting the
position."
"It's unfortu­nate
the elections
process had to go
on so long," she
said.
H o w e v e r ,
Steves, who par­ticipated
in all
three elections
needed to deter­mine
the president, will not offi­cially
be considered the AS presi­dent
until all grievances are
resolved.
A second run-off election was
necessary because Papineau was
disqualified by the AS Election
Board for failing to comply with
sanctions issued by the board for
"The entire
process is
bogus ... the
appeals that
have been filed
are
completely
petty."
Arionda Feeney
Election Board chair
a violation of the elections code,
and by the AS Election
Coordinator for failing to turn in
his financial statement on time.
Papineau ' appealed the
Election Board's disqualification
decision to the AS Board of
Directors Wednesday. The
Elections Board ruled at its April
27 meeting Papineau violated the
elections code when he sent mail
urging students to vote to almost
2,000 students.
As a penalty,
the board ordered
Papineau to
remove all of his
posters from Red
Square. The board
ruled at its April 29
meeting Papineau
did not remove his
posters by the
deadline, file an
appeal or contact
the Election Board
chair, so the board
disqualified him
for failing to com­ply
with the sanc­tions.
"I was in com­pliance
to the best of my knowl­edge,"
Papineau said at
Wednesday's AS Board meeting.
"There was not real opportunity
for me to appeal the decision
before I had to comply."
Papineau is also appealing his
disqualification for failing to
See Steves, page 3
Front/Shane Powell
More than 200 students gathered Thursday morning
to join in prayer as part of National Day of Prayer.
Front/Shane Powell
By Julie Graham
The Western Front
Western joined in a world­wide
network of prayer
Thursday morning, as more
than 200 students gathered
for an hour at the fountain
in Red Square to pray for
local and national concerns
and to praise God with
song, said Jessica Delgado,
an intern at The INN.
Jennifer Peak, a senior at
Western, said, "For me, it
was just a little glimpse of
heaven, because that's how
it's going to be ... all of us
saints praising God togeth­er."
Students began arriving at
7 a.m. for the prayer gather­ing
to celebrate the National
Day of Prayer.
The gathering opened by
singing "I Believe in Jesus"
to the music of guitars,
drums and a violin, and
then students spoke out
praises they had for God.
After another hymn, stu­dents
broke into small
groups for prayer. Topics for
prayer included the stu­dents
and faculty of
Western, the unity of believ­ers,
the community of
Bellingham, the nation and
the world.
See Prayer, page 3
Benefit gathers funds for medical supplies in Iraq
By Mark Dewar
The Western Front
Western student Charlie Brown spoke at
the Shalom Center Thursday about the
problems in Iraq that he said are caused by
sanctions put on the country in 1990.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths of chil­dren
under the age of five have occurred in
Iraq since the U.N. Security Council imple­mented
these sanctions, Brown said.
Sanctions were imposed by the United
Nations on Iraq to force Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein to allow access to his
weapons of mass destruction. Created in
1990, these sanctions have led to the death
of 1.5 million Iraqi people because the
sanctions forbid needed medical and food
supplies from reaching the county, Brown
said.
"This dying would be preventable with
antibiotics and adequate food supplies,"
Brown said. "These are pointless, needless
deaths."
Brown said he will travel next January to
Iraq in a delegation with "Voices of
Wilderness," a group dedicated to bring­ing
needed medical and food supplies to
the people of Iraq.
Brown said that while in Iraq, his dele­gation
will give supplies directly to hospi­tals.
Some of the medical
supplies being given are
gauze, bedding, medi­cines
and syringes, Brown
said. The supplies are
being donated by physi­cians
and clinics who are
sympathetic to the situa­tion
in Iraq, he said.
Before he spoke, two
videos were shown
regarding the circum­stances
in Iraq, one a "60 Minutes" seg­ment
from May 1996 that included an
interview with now Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright. In the segment, it was
pointed out that Iraq can't even bring in
chlorine to put in the water supply to help
prevent diseases. The segment said the
"Guilt doesn't
empower me to
do anything, but
remorse does."
Charlie Brown
Western student
chlorine could be used to make chemical
weapons.
The second was a film of a visit to Iraq
by two women, Sharon O'Conhell and
Sharon Avolio, titled "After the Storm."
The two went to Iraq after the Gulf War
and saw the devastation
caused by the war and
what the sanctions are
doing to Iraq's people. It
included footage of
severely malnourished
babies the movie attrib­uted
to the sanctions.
"The Gulf War hasn't
ended its attrition against
children," Brown said.
"The sanctions are doing
nothing but starving innocent people,"
O'Connell said in the video.
"Since the bombing (from the war), you
can't give children anything but sugar and
water," she said.
"Saddam Hussein is bad, but the sanc­tions
are a lot worse," Brown said.
Brown said he will be in Iraq for about
three weeks. He said "Voices of
Wilderness" is providing its service
because it feels somewhat responsible for
the problems in Iraq, and that it will be a
"kind of atonement for letting the Gulf War
happen."
"Guilt doesn't empower me to do any­thing,
but remorse does," Brown said.
Brown said he will need about $1,700 to
cover the expenses for his trip. Part of the
reason for his speech was to raise some
money for these expenses.
After his three weeks in Iraq, Brown will
come back to the United States and travel
across the country speaking to college and
church groups about the problems in Iraq.
When Brown goes on his trip, he said he
runs the risk of being prosecuted by the
U.S. government because delegation trips
are illegal in that they violate the sanctions
imposed by the United Nations. Brown
and those in his delegation could face a
possible penalty of a $1.25 million fine or
12 years in prison.