Miami Hurricane, February 22, 2000

              Giovanni Ribisi rules in ‘The Boiler Room’
ACCENT pages

Canes sweep series with South Florida
SPORTS page 3
Volume 77, Number 35__WWW.HURRICAWE.MIAMI.EDU
Presidential hopeful’s wife gives literature talk
The potential first lady discusses the German state of mind
By Fawad M. Siddiqui
Hurricane Staff Writer
Dr. Ernestine Schlant Bradley, college professor and wife to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bill Bradley, said that she never envisioned herself where she is today—two steps away from being the nation’s first lady—when first arriving in America as a 21 -year-old stewardess from her native Germany in 1957.
Bradley was at the Hillel Jewish Student Center Thursday to discuss her most recent book The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust, published in March 1999, and to campaign for her husband’s presidential bid.
“It’s been a wonderful and enriching journey,’’ Bradley said, of the life that has led her to now take a break (Tom her professorship of German and Comparative Literature at Montclair University in New Jersey to campaign, “and also, at times, a painful one."
A mother of two, one daughter
from her 26-year marriage to Bill and another from an earlier marriage, Bradley is also a breast cancer survivor and the founder of “The Unsung Heroines Award," designed to honor those women for uncommon yet unrecognized community contributions.
Thursday’s event was put together in 24 hours, according to Rabbi Jeffrey Falick, director of Hillel, with about 35 people attending. It was part of a daylong, three-stop cam paigning tour of Florida, said Bradley’s campaign organizers, with
one stop earlier in the day at the University of South Florida in Tampa and another at a center for the elderly in Miami just before the talk at Hillel.
Bradley’s own contributions as a German scholar have focused around the literature of her once-homeland, giving her the chance to get back in touch with the culture that she had lost contact with since coming to America, she said during her talk.
What she found through research tor her book was a cyclic pattern uf each new German generation trying to come to grips, or not come to grips, with the events of World War II and reflecting that in their literature, said Bradley.
“There is no one in the postwar German generations who has not had to comf to terms with the Holocaust no matter how old they are," said Bradley, who was born Ernestine Schlant in Passau, Germany, in 1937, and was just a little girl during the war years.
Bradley said she was brought to her own “Holocaust awareness" in college in America, in a non-hostile setting and that, in researching tor her book, she saw literature was a good way to see how German writers were and are "exploring what the Holocaust means to them."
“Every 15 years there is a new wave of authors who deal with it,"
said Bradley.
She predicted that when the current youth of Germany, with their new closeness to the lewish side of the events, start to write, that then is when the literature will truly take on a sympathetic and understanding voice with regards to the Holocaust.
“I think this is where, hopefully, the direction will go for the literature,” said Bradley
She said many recent controversies on anti-Semitism issues and a more frank discussion of the “Nazi terminology” in the country are signs of the change in the way the country is looking at its past.
Bradley also spoke on the subiect of stereotypes against Germans in this country, such as the labeling of all German symbols, even West German ones, as Nazi symbols, or of
all Ormans as Nazi«.	**
“I would hope that eventually this is something that will be gotten over. My father was in the air force, but not a member of the Nazi party. It’s a stereotype that all Germans were Nazis You can make counter-statements against stereotypes, but it is very hard to make an imprint. I really do think that younger people can do a lot to combat that."
James Colen, a Miami Beach resident taking a Spanish class at the University, said he heard about the Bradley’s speech five minutes before it started and decided to
F. SIDDIQUI / HURRICANE STAFF
BOOK TALK: Dr Ernestine Bradley speaks at Hillel about her German past and the Holocaust.
attend.
Colen said he did not get what he expected from the speech.
“I was expecting a political speech. She’s very intelligent,” he said.
According to Colen, he hadn’t made up his mind on who he was going to be voting for in November, but that he was impressed by Bradley.
“Her speech would make me more likely to vote for her husband. I think she’d be a very good and efficient first lady,” Colen said.
Walking for a cure
FAWAO SIDDIQUI / Hume ane Staff
READY TO START: Sophomore Marie Figurerdo signs up for the AIDS Walk, the final A Week for Life event held Sunday, as executive committee sophomore Mary Miller and senior Regina Rushford register participants
Tuesday, February 22,2000
JORGE GALVEZ t Hurricane Staff
ROCK THE VOTE: Professor Donn Tilson creates strategies to increase voter turnout with his students
Public relations class helps with SG elections
By Ernesto Londono
With the theme, “Ignite Your Right...Vote,” 40 students taking Dr. Donn ). Tilson’s CPR 116 Introduction to Public Relations class plan to raise voter turnout for Student Government elections, which will be held February 28-March I.
This is the second consecutive year Tilson, assistant professor of Public Relations, is leading a class in promoting the bene
fits of voting student for sc Government
Elections.
“ V o t i n g increased by 22% last year," said Tilson.
“Before that,
numbers had been slipping year after
year."
Chris Roby, director of Student Activities and leadership Programs, said approximately 1,500 out of 8,500 potential voters actuallv vote in the elections each year.
Tilson said he divided his class into eight teams, with two teams working on a general campus promotion for the campaign, one team targeting commuter students, and another concentrating on the School of Nursing and the School of Music. The remaining four will cover the residential colleges.
“The first step was to figure out
which areas had the lowest turnout in the past and come up with aggressive strategies in order to change these voting trends,” said Tilson.
He said his students have created banners and fivers to reach the UM community.
According to Tilson, it is important tor the students to understand what the responsibilities and contributions ot the Student Government are, which include the bus shelters, blue light phones, and the creation of evaluations for teachers.
"The more inclusive we make the student body, the more inclusive we make UM. That’s basically the bottom line," said Tilson. “This type of activity makes classroom study real. We can talk about theories and principles, and that is important, but applying them to real life situations makes the learning process more vivid"
“I have learned a lot from this experience." said freshman l.ayla Acirfa. “I didn’t know how much SG was responsible tor until I started this assignment. So many students are apathetic to student activities and hopefully, through this campaign, I will help change at least 10 people’s attitudes."
“By intertwining academics with hands-on experience such as the SG elections promotion we, as students, are getting the hands-on experience that is so essential for a successful career in public relations," freshman lulio Barroso said.
JORGE GALVEZ / Hurricane Staff CAMPAIGN: Sophomores Lindsey Strube aod Bernadette Geib participate in the public relations project.
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