Maroon

              Loyola University New Orleans THE MAROON VOL. 82, NO. 2 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2003 MAROON.LOYNO.EDU Noted activist Prejean leads death row talk By Earl Descant Assistant news editor The audience in a packed Roussel Hall sat spellbound Tuesday night as three death penalty opponents told their stories. Sister Helen Prejean C.S.J, wrote "Dead Man Walking," a book which was made into an Oscar-winning movie. Denise Leßoeuf is a defense attorney who specializes in saving her clients from execution, and Ray Krone is an exonerated death row inmate. All three of the activists came to their truth about the death penalty differently and somewhat grudgingly. Prejean said that working with poor people in New Orleans' St. Thomas housing project in the early 1980s and corresponding with death row inmate Patrick Sonnier made her aware of a process that seemed to plague poor black people in the South. "Poor people get the death penalty because they don't have resources," she said. Prejean also stressed that the death penalty is almost never used in northern states, and even in the South capital punishment occurs at a much higher rate in cases of offenders of black-on-white murders than black-on-black murders. Leßoeuf began working with death row inmates in Louisiana soon after she graduated from law school. Her clients did not seek her out because of her expert knowledge of law, but because few lawyers will take capital cases, she said. "People were coming to me and saying take this case, I have no one else," said Leßoeuf. Like Prejean, Leßoeuf saw patterns among death row inmates. "The death penalty is about racism, poverty and tremendous, untreated childabuse," she said. In case after case, Leßoeuf said she was drawn into a vast world of injustices in the political system. One example was an attorney who, having committed a crime, had been sentenced by the court to public service — acting as a defense attorney in a capital case he was not qualified to handle. Krone, 45, was released from Arizona's state prison on April 8, 2002. He spent 10 years behind bars for a crime that he did not commit. It was only after Krone's story was on the front page of The Arizona Republic that the prosecution conceded it had erred and Krone was released. Prior to the media publicity, other seemingly indisputable defenses, such as DNA evidence that did not ADJUSTING AT LOYOLA By Lan Bui and Dominique Ellis Contributing writers Preparations had been made for another "bigger, brighter"group of freshman. How has the Class 0f2007 affected Loyola? and Earl Descant Assistant news editor Loyola administrators from Residential Life to Parking Services anticipated and planned for a bumper crop of new freshman for the fall semester. However, according to the admissions department Web site, the total enrollment for the year is only 5,900, about 300 more than last year. Some 3,800 of those are undergraduates. And despite the relatively small size of Loyola, the student body is made up of students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and 48 STAFF PHOTO BY PAMELA HOWARD Vocal performance freshman Kristen McElhaney, at left, checks prices on the freezer at the C-Store. Management and finance freshman Katie Hart and general studies freshman Megan Beck, below, toss ballons at each other during Splash in the Spirit. STAFF PHOTO BY GILLIAN DICKER Loyola's copyright policies leave gray area By Joe Rosemeyer News editor £bould-profs start PNGp iAlf It's a fall tradition that goes hand in hand with the back-to-school grind: complaints about the price of books. Many professors at Loyola try to lessen those costs. Instead of making their students purchase several pricey textbooks, they opt to assemble course packets. The packets generally are photocopied pages taken from various texts that relate to the course, and students can buy them at the cost of reproduction. But according to assistant professor of visual arts Simeon Hunter, that process leaves a lot of questions with regards to legality. "There's some gray area when it comes to photocopying academic texts," Hunter said. According to Central Reproduction manager Randy Laumann, the responsibility for clearing the materials' copyrights lies with the professor. Laumann says Central Reproduction operates under the assumption that the professors have cleared the copyrights, but when asked about a written copyright policy or university guideline, he said, "What we've got here is kind of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy." Hunter says that policy can leave professors open to lawsuits from publishers. And more important than the legal considerations, Hunter says he believes that giving royalties to the authors is a matter of ethics. "I understand that students don't want to pay too much for these packets," Hunter said. "But "This isn't like downloading music from Napster where you can just say that it's the record company. You're probably stealing from an old man in a tweed coat who isn't making that much money in the first place." - COLIN WILLIAMS, CLASSICAL STUDIES SENIOR, on paying for copyrights in course packets See PREJEAN, Page 2 See FRESHMEN, Page 3 See COPYRIGHT, Page 3 wrgrehteh