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Seven Days

Wednesday, September 25
A Brown University study ranks Tennessee state government's website one of the best such sites in the nation. The clincher: It's the best place to seek out good, non-tax-paid corn liquor, the study concluded.

Thursday, September 26
UT announces the hiring of a communications and marketing consultant to improve its image. That's what happens when you fall from the top of the party school ranks and your football team loses to Florida.

Friday, September 27
After months of speculation, the planetarium and children's museum project known as Universe Knoxville is finally declared dead by Knox County Executive Mike Ragsdale. If it had just been named Adverse Knoxville maybe it would have flown with the community's agin'ers.
An eight-foot-long Burmese python is reported on the loose in the Carter community. In a follow-up story, a six-foot-tall Knox County Animal Control officer is reported on the loose in Burma.

Saturday, September 28
What's a Rutgers? After the Scarlet Knights ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, no one was asking.

Monday, September 30
Goody's, one of the Knoxville area's largest public companies, announces it is in negotiations to be sold to an unnamed buyer in a deal that will render about a $100 million payoff to Goody's CEO Bob Goodfriend. He goes into hiding as the number of charities and politicians asking him for money skyrockets.
UT's plans to collaborate with Knox County schools to create a model high school are finally announced. Only one minor drawback, locally. The school is to be in Beijing, China, not in Knoxville.

Tuesday, October 1
The state's tough new DUI law goes into effect, increasing penalties for those convicted twice or more. Previously, repeat DUI offenders were simply taken out and shot. Now they'll really have to pay.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Second in our apparently ongoing series of "Shots of Upper Portions of Downtown Knoxville Churches," last week's Knoxville Found is the spire of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on West Vine. Many readers recognized this familiar feature of downtown's skyline, though Councilman Rob Frost, as usual, was first. (There. You got mentioned again, Rob. Will you please quit threatening to have us rezoned?) Second, though, was downtown resident Greg O'Connor. For his prize, Greg receives a copy of humorist Marc Maron's The Jerusalem Syndrome: My Life as a Reluctant Messiah, because it's the only thing we could find that has even a vague religious connotation. (However, no less a humor authority than Janeane Garofalo says, "Marc Maron is the first crazy person I've ever envied." So we hope it will entertain Greg.)

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

CITIZENS FOR POLICE REVIEW FORUM/LUNCHEON >Thursday, October 3
11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
2928 East Magnolia, Suite B108
A conversation with Ron Daniels, an expert in the field of civil rights/human rights. RSVP at 455-3765 (you can leave message) or e-mail.

SCHOOL BOARD MANAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE REVIEW COMMITTEE
Saturday, Oct. 4
9 a.m.
School Board Conference Rm.
Andrew Johnson Bldg.
912 S. Gay St.
The Management and Performance Review, District Organization and Management, will be discussed.

COMMUNITY RALLY FOR QUESTION 2
Saturday, Oct. 4
noon
John T. O'Connor Senior Citizen's Center
611 Winona St.
A rally to support allowing fines greater than $50 to be imposed, without a jury trial, on violators of city ordinances. For more info call 523-1135.

MPC STREET TREE MASTER PLAN OPEN HOUSE
Monday, Oct. 7
4-7 p.m.
Board Room of the Candy Factory
1060 World's Fair Park Drive and Wednesday, Oct. 9
4-7 p.m.
West Knox Branch Library
100 Golf Club Road
Opportunity for viewing the draft results of a series of public workshops held in the spring.

LOTTERY FORUM
Tuesday, Oct. 8
7 p.m.
Goind Bldg. Auditorium
Pellissippi State TCC
Speakers will be state Sen. Stephen Cohen and Dr. Angelo Volpe of the Tennessee Student Scholarship Lottery Coalition and Michael Gilstrap of the Gambling Free Tennessee Alliance.

Xenophobia Made Easy
Universities are to track international students

A controversial set of federal requirements for tracking foreign students and faculty members at American universities has some people at UT on edge.

The tracking plan, known as "SEVIS," for Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, is to go into effect Jan. 30, 2003. Details of its enforcement are being published, piecemeal, in the Federal Register, but UT academic departments are being informed that they will be responsible for providing information on international visitors to the Immigration and Naturalization Service on a regular basis.

Not all are happy about it. Pamela Schoenewaldt, a writer in residence and adjunct instructor in the English Department, is particularly agitated. She refers to the singling out and monitoring of international students and faculty as requiring "electronic armbands," a pointed comparison with mandates that Jews wear identifying armbands in Nazi Germany.

Schoenewaldt is advocating a sort of countermeasure in which all UT students and faculty would appear Jan. 30 wearing yellow armbands imprinted "International." Such a gesture recalls the King of Denmark's wearing of a Star of David-bearing armband when all Danish Jews were ordered to do so by occupying Nazi forces.

James Gehlhar, director of UT's Center for International Education, has been briefing the academic community there on the SEVIS requirements as he understands them. Gehlhar says there will be mandatory electronic reporting to the INS on the whereabouts of all international students, faculty and dependents, along with information on students' courses and academic progress. There may also be websites devoted to the reporting requirements or email reports in the mix.

Part of the INS mandate has been in effect for decades, Gehlhar says, and the government began looking seriously into expanding and enforcing the measures ever since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The September 11 events stirred more expansion of the requirements and a demand for more rigid enforcement.

Gehlhar says the actual enforcement regulations are just beginning to dribble into the Federal Register, but he confirms that there has been "talk in government circles" of flagging some students from certain countries to prohibit their enrollment in classes that might be exploited by those with hostile intentions to the United States.

Nuclear physics and microbiology might be examples of courses barred to citizens of some countries, particularly those accused of supporting or sponsoring international terrorism.

According to Gehlhar, the university has nearly 1,000 international students—two-thirds of them in graduate courses—and more than 300 visiting faculty members and an undetermined number of dependents here on visas who will be affected. Academic standing can lead to deportation for those students not keeping up with coursework or class grades on which their visas were issued.

"This is just the beginning of a somewhat sinister xenophobic exercise," says Schoenewaldt, who sees the federal mandate as requiring universities "to threaten their own identity as platforms for international research."

She says the tracking system "will certainly have a chilling effect on our international guests who come to us to learn and contribute to our learning."

Anita Patel, an immigration lawyer who practices in Knoxville, agrees that there will be a chilling effect on getting the best international students to attend any U.S. college or university, much less UT, and Gehlhar says that there is some anecdotal evidence that international students may have already started picking European or Canadian universities for their advanced study because of an anticipated tightening of U.S. requirements. Direct evidence won't be available until the system goes into effect next year, unless it is further stymied along the way.

"There is a lot of fuzziness [in SEVIS] that will have to be worked out by the courts," Gehlhar says, "Someone, somewhere will file suit, I'm sure."

—Barry Henderson