Miami Hurricane, January 30, 2001

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Team wins opening series over FAU
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Coral Gables, Florida
Volume 78, Number 29
The Miami 1
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WB vampire stars in first Tte,-*ure film

WWW.HURRICANE.MIAMI.EOU
Since 1927
January 30,2001
New ID codes replace SSN
. Registrar’s move secures student
online identities
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By Gloria Merritt
Hurricane Staff Writer
New University student ID numbers that will take the place of previously used social security codes have been randomly assigned to students, faculty and staff this semester, said Scott Ingold, the Associate Dean of Enrollments and Registrar.
IngaWA ««id that the plan was initiated last semester, when Student Government President Shane Weaver approached him with student concerns over giving out their social security codes, which are supposed to be private.
Ingold said that he and Jacqueline Zucker of the Computer Information	Technology
Department worked together on the new system to avoid any possible conflicts between the old and new codes.
Ingold’s department has sent out an E-mail message to all students, faculty and staff at their official University accounts regarding the change, and post cards to those who don’t have official E-mail addresses.
Many students had not heard about the new ID numbers last week, and were still voicing their concerns about yelling out social security numbers in crowded University settings. V
“When I have to say my social security number I feel like people can easily use it to hook up their
See ID CODES • Page 3
‘The Maestro’
High society drawn to exhibit,
book unveiling
By Fawad Siddiqui
News Editor
The Lowe Art Museum held an event honoring 96-year-old painter Cundo Bermudez, one of Miami’s “living legend" Cuban-exile artists, Wednesday.
Much of South Florida’s “Cuban-American élite" was in attendance, according to Lowe Director Brian Dursam.
“The main reason for tonight was to inaugurate and help promote the book on his life,” said Dursam.
“We did this because the museum has a Cuban Collection and it seemed like a very natural kind of event for us to have." The event was the official announcement of the book, which was displayed prominently at the museum’s entrance.
Born in Havana in 1914, Bermudez took up painting in the '50s and left the island in the ’60s after becoming disillusioned with Castro’s government.
“I left Cuba absolutely disillusioned, perhaps because I had believed totally in the revolution," Bermudez is quoted in an online biography as having once said. “Between 1962 and 1967, the government obliterated me; I was neither harassed nor persecuted, simply ignored.”
Since coming to Miami, being ignored has not been one of Bermudez’ problems. He’s taken to the fore of a group of exile painters and won numerous awards.
Inside the Lowe, about 400 sharply dressed Miamians sipped drinks and enjoyed h’ors d'oeu-vres as they talked and enjoyed dozens of brightly colored Bermudez paintings hanging
on the walls.
At the edges of the crowd, camera-waving journalists weaved in and out, trying to get shots of the diminutive Bermudez himself as he made rounds.
The silver-haired, horn-rimmed-glasses-wcaring painter shared smiles, handshakes and a few quiet words in Spanish—he doesn’t speak English—with his adorers.
Most of them refer to him simply as “Cundo."
The event had been suggested by one of the museum’s Cuban-American advisors, said Dursam, and was co-sponsored by Lehman Brothers and The Cuban-American Endowment for the Arts.
“The people here aren’t necessarily all Cuban-Americans," Dursam said. “A lot of them are, and a lot of them are collectors.”
The exhibition of Bermudez’ work at the Lowe lasted for only one day and was taken down Thursday, Mid Dursam.
This was also the museum’s first real art exhibit for the semester,said Dursam.
The museum has still had a busy early semester, though. It cosponsored the Beaux Arts Festival two weekends ago and has an ongoing music series this semester called Notes, Strokes and Movement, said Dursam.
One of the most prominent South Florida Cuban-Americans in attendance was Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez and his wife Angela.
“I have been an admirer of Cundo’s work for a long time,” said Martinez. “I collect art and I have a few of his pieces.”
Martinez is another particularly noteworthy Cuban-American, since he was one of the first Hispanic mayors in the country when first sworn into Hialeah’s head office in 1978.
“It’s a great honor to be here for the presentation of his new book,” he said.
See MAESTRO • Page 3
FAWAD SIDOWUt /Hurricane Staff
MASTER PAINTER: Cuban artist Cundo Bermudez stands before one of his pieces at the Lowe, Wednesday. 400-plus people attended inauguration of a new book
on his work.
Down and dirty with the towing guys
FAWAD SIOOWUI / Hcrlcane Staff
SHOOTING THE BREEZE- Southland Towing Vice President Peter Hernandez taks with an afnployee Behind, a freshly towed Beetle waits for its UM student owner to claim it.
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By Fawad Siddiqui
News Editor
The anger and ire of UM students over parking troubles is nothing new to Hector Antonia, a fresh-faced young man in an almost police-looking uniform, sitting behind the front desk of Southland Towing.
Five minutes south of the University on U.S.-l and just off a Bird Road side street. Southland lies, quietly nesded, facing a strip-dub known as The Alley Cat.
It’s a neighborhood that Antonio said he or the other Southland employees—a group of mostly large-necked, yet good-natured men—don’t consider particularly “bad.” Though Miami Hurricane photographers balk at approaching it
Southland is the last piece of the UM parking-situation puzzle. The place where towed cars The
graveyard.
Sitting behind a reflective, bulletproof-looking glass barrier—put in place after a “holdup incident” three months ago—Antonia is the one who has to deal with UM students whose cars have been towed for parking in campus fire lanes.
It’s a largely painful experience, he said.
“Every once in a while you get someone pretty vulgar,” Antonio said of the semi-constant stream of students.
About I0 cars a week are towed from UM to Southland at the start of the semester, which fades to a trickle of two or three per week as the semester goes on, said Southland vice president Peter Hernandez.
“The guys go off the deep end,” said Antonia of me percentage of
See TOWING • Page 2}
Law
School
Con
features
free
speech
film
Demme, panel focus on Haitian democracy
By Danielle Scott
Assistant News Editor
The Agronomist is a work-inprogress-documentary about the life
ari^ cerrer oif	Uattiim radtci
journalist lean Dominique and his widow, fellow journalist Michele Montas, by Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme.
Two segments of the documentary were shown Friday afternoon in the Bill Cosford Cinema as part of The Conference on the Role of the Free Press and Freedom of Expression in Haiti, hosted by the School of Law.
“The Agronomist is a symbol of the fight for democracy," said Irwin Stotzky, professor of law and founder and director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights.
Stotzky acted as the master of ceremonies Friday, introducing the film and moderating the panel discussion.
Although Demme was supposed to be present to take part in the panel discussion after the viewing, he was unable to be there because of labor problems on the set of the film he is now working on in Paris, France, Stotzky said.
Demme sent a written statement, which Stotzky read before the showing, in which the director explained the circumstances that brought about the making of the documentary.
He had met lean Dominique in the late 1980s and had wanted to collaborate with him on several documentaries about topics such as the cinema in Haiti.
“For me, jean Dominique was an absolute theatre superstar waiting to happen, just as Columbus discovered America, I would discover Jean,” Demme wrote.
However, the 63 year-old Dominique’s murder this April 3 changed the course of things and The Agronomist was born.
“This film is not in any way an investigation into the cowardly, heinous and catastrophic assassination of Jean Dominique. That is a* matter for President-elect Aristide’s judicial system...rather this film is
See DEMME • Page 3