Miami Hurricane, February 26, 2002

              Baseball extends win streak to 6
page 5
Students’ lives as seen by their cars
page
7
Standing up for minority rights
OPINION page 11
The Miami H
SPf C FORM
Coral Gables,Florida
Volume 79, Number 36
WWW.THEHURRICANEONLINE.
CANE
Since 1927
; February 26,2002
Alcohol factors into fatal crash
Students spend 5.5 billion on drinking
By Ernesto Londono
Hurricane Staff Writer
Toxicology results released by the Miami Hade Medical Examiner's Office indicated that UM linebacker Chris Campbell was legally drunk when he crashed into a tree at a quiet Coral Cables intersection during the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 16.
The 21 -year-old had a blood-alcohol level of 0 13, well above Florida’s legal limit of 0.08.
Alcohol is one of four factors that police are investigating in order to determine the cause of the one-vehicle accident, said Coral Gables police spokesman Raul Pedroso, who cited fatigue, excess speed, and unbuckled seatbelts as other possible catalysts in the fatal crash.
No stains of drugs were found in Campbells body, said Pedroso.
|oel Rodriguez. 23, the only passenger in the car, was released from jackson Memorial Hospital last Thursday and is recovering from a punctured lung and broken ribs.
A fastened seatbelt would probably have made little difference in preventing the accident due to the severity of the impact on the driver’s side of Campbell's Toyota Camry, police said.
However, police said that buckling up would probably have significantly reduced Rodriguez's injuries that were caused when his
body jerked forward upon impact.
News of Campbell’s death struck a sour nerve on Susan Isenberg, president of the Miami chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Isenberg lost her 17-year-old son in 1986 when an intoxicated driver slammed into a tree in Coconut Grove.
“His name was also Chris,” she told The Hurricane. “As soon as I heard the time of the crash and the circumstances, 1 was pretty certain alcohol was involved."
Isenberg said the toxicology results showed the amount Campbell drank prior to getting behind the wheel was “pretty high, even for someone his size”
“He probably had between six or seven drinks during a very short period of time," she said.
During a phone interview from his hospital room the day after the accident, Rodriguez, told The Hurricane that although his recollection of that night was toggy, he believed Campbell had not been drinking, and described his late friend as a responsible driver.
Edwin Mims, Campbell’s uncle, told the Associated Press last week that “nobody in our family drinks. If it came out that way, it’s a big surprise to us.”
Alcohol-related accidents m Florida
See ALCOHOL • Page 2
Memorial service honors Campbell
Danielle Scott
News Editor
Sobs echoed around the Gusman Hall as Chris Campbell’s smiling face faded out at the end of a short video shown at his memorial service last Thursday.
Campbell, a University of Miami linebacker, died last Saturday morning in a car accident. He was 21.
UM students, ‘Canes fans, and Campbell’s friends, teammates, and family, more than filled the auditorium to its 600 capacity at the morn ing memorial.
The memorial had a distinctly Christian theme as Campbell’s teammates read Psalms
27, and a passage from Thessalonians. They referred to themselves as Campbell’s fellow brothers in Christ.
“We believe that )esus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him,” they quoted from I Thessalonians.
Notable members of the college and professional football community who knew Campbell, including former UM coach Butch Davis and former UM teammates playing in the NFL, were present to show their respect.
The stage was decorated with Campbell’s No. 48 football jersey, floral arrangements and his photograph on an easel. Most of the speeches made in memory of Campbell came from members of the UM football community, such as former coach Davis; fullback, Najeh Davenport; safety, James Lewis; linebacker, Howard Clark; and line
See CAMPBELL • Page 2
Greek Week kicks off at the Rat
Event plagued by lack of organization
By Jaclyn Lisenby
Hurricane Staff Writer
The lack of organization for Greek Week 2002 inhibited the fun that could have been had, said members of the Greek community.
“It’s pitifully organized. It was a Greek headache. 1 will never be a chair again if I can help it. Some parts of Greek Week are really not aces,” said Sigma Phi F.psilon member and chair of (¡reek Week Jay Wetzel.
Each member was required to sign in and out of the opening ceremonies-which took place last Friday afternoon at the Rathskeller-toget maximum points for their team.
However, no one was monitoring the list and students forged signatures of members not present, making the competition unfair from day one.
Several participants complained about the lack of organization and the fact that only two events of Greek Week were philanthropic-the blood drive and the dance-a thon, in which participants are required to pay $25 to dance.
About 90 percent of the proceeds go to United Cerebral Palsy [UCP|.
Last year, the Greek community raised about $5,000 about the price of the two 21-day trips to Europe given to the winners of the (ireek god and goddess competition.
When asked about the philanthropic aspects of Greek Week at opening ceremonies, a Delta Gamma replied,“! really don’t
know much about it. I think there’s a dance-a-thon or something.”
Her sisters came to her rescue and explained that they are supporting the UCP.
“Greek Week develops leadership and helps us to become well rounded individuals. It also promotes unity within the Greek community,” said Kate Devlin, a Delta Gamma.
“It does promote brotherhood. We come together by trying to win,” Wetzel said.
Last Friday, the noise of over 300 sorority and fraternity members packed into the Rathskeller could be heard as far as Eaton Residential College.
The theme was a I960’s/Austin Powers idea, and the Rat was decorated with beaded curtains, huge psychedelic flower cutouts, and posters claiming quotes like “Zeta is shag-a-dette” and “Do we make you horny, baby?”
The event, scheduled to start at 4 p.m., did not begin until 4:30 p.m., and kicked off with a slide show of pictures of members of the organizations throughout the past year.
Following the slide show. President of Panhellenic Jorge Lima, dressed as Austin Powers, took the microphone and yelled the name of each organization.
Each group, in turn, replied with a cheer,or a loud roar.
As the noise subsided, Lima stated that this year would tse the most exciting Greek Week ever because “every Greek organization is participating," to which the crowd responded with yet another loud cheer.
Each sorority and fraternity was represented at the opening ceremonies- something
that has not happened in about 15 years.
“I’m really glad every organization is participating,” said Kappa Kappa Gamma chair
Krista Nelson ‘It really shows how the Greek community comes together”
But comes together for what?
Vice-president of Panhellenic Mary Clark, dressed as Austin Powers’s sidekick in a silver and hot pink mini dress, was quoted in the Feb. 22 issue of The Miami Hurricane as saying, “The philanthropic events are worth the most, because that’s what Greek Week is all about."
However, when a candidate for Greek god was asked what he would change about philanthropic events in Greek life, he answered, “I’d make it more fun and easier."
The ceremony also consisted of a competition between students for Greek god and goddess.
Each candidate was required to perform a song of their choice, then were awarded points for correctly answering questions on Greek life, philosophy, and humorous topics, like“Who would you rather shag...?”
Music included everything from “Baby Got Back,” with guys dressed as women with large posteriors, to the winning song, the Star Spangled banner performed in sign language by a Sigma Delta Tau.
The Lambda Chi Alpha representative won the title of Greek god.
The winners of the competition were awarded a 21 day trip to Europe, paid for by the Greek Week committee.
Greek Week continues through Friday, March 1.
UM researchers developing process to inhibit HIV
Technological breakthrough to take years before becoming available to general public
By Matt Brewer
Hurricane Staff Wntet
University of Miami researchers recently developed a molecular process that blocks HIV from spreading and infecting new cells.
ft is a breakthrough that virologists Dr. Gunter Kraus and I>r James Hnatatyszyn call the “scissors effect,” a term that describes a process inhibiting the virus’s ability to infect and replicate.
There is no known cure for HIV or AIDS, the later stages of the infection.
“HIV’s most well-known trait is its high mutation rate which generates new variants of the virus that are resistant to current drug therapies," said Dr. Kraus, who has been working on this project tor 20 years.
This newly-developed technology has the “ability to target and stop certain molecular functions, (making] a future application for this process clearly a vaccine development on the cellular level," Kraus said.
This new vaccine is not a cure for AIDS, Kraus said, but it is a major breakthrough in [ »¿entiallv stopping the Spread of the virus
through new infection.
“Our discovery presents a major victory in the war against HIVT Kraus said. His team’s recently-published findings in the January 2002 issue of Gene Therapy support Kraus’s claim.
The promise of their new research will like ly take several more years to develop into anything like a vaccine for public consumption, and it is likely to be a sort of therapy treatment that must be administered over a course of time, Kraus said.
But there is hope.
One crucial step for this new technology to progress further is for UM to take action to secure the patents on the research so that Kraus and his associates can effectively seek out sources of funding from large pharmaceu tical companies.
* Private sector investors must first havt*i
patent to secure financial interests before they will commit funding and researchers to a project.
Kraus also said that “a biochemist needs to make a stable, synthetic form of the EGS 560” -before this can become a viable form of treat ment which, “fortunately, |the EGS 560 mole cule| is small, and should therefore be easily replicated”
If a patent were to be secured quickly, then pharmaceutical companies could begin work on making this a readily available preventative mechanism, Kraus said.
This entire predicament takes on a real seriousness when one considers the statistic that over 14,000 people daily are infected by the HIV virus
If UM does not pursue the patents within the next year, the patent rights will fall to the researchers, who hopefully will privately pur
sue them, bringing this new valuable medical breakthrough to as many people as possible, as soon as possible.
While the research team waits for their patents to clear, they are continuing research that tests EGS 560 against different, more com plicated dades, or types of the HIV virus. Their results are very promising, but more research and funding is needed to advance the process further.
Funding is crucial for widespread testing and devefopment, as expensive technologies arc needed to store and utilize samples, and pure concentrated forms of the HIV virus are used - therefore, the team has to use a Bio-Safety Level 3 laboratory.
The basic premise behind the research is simple.
Within a cell is RNA, the message component that makes cells act and form uniquely essentially providing the information to manu facture proteins.
RNA is also the first place that the HIV virus infects the body.
* After infecting the body's RNA, the viHl-
then proceeds to invade the DNA, the very cellular code that maps out the creation of further
cells.
Once the DNA gets infected by HIV, then all of the newly-formed cells are infected too, spreading the virus throughout the body-a viral attack that the body cannot fight because the HIV virus attacks the CD4 T cells that are the source of the human immune response.
Human GD4 T cells are the cells that allow the body to fight disease, and the destruction of the body’s CD4 T cells by HIV is what cripples the immune system.
Once AIDS sets in, a patient’s ruined immune scstem is unable to fight any sort of disease or infection.
Kraus and Hnatyszvn used a natural cellular mechanism, called RNase P, that cleaves RNA, preventing HIV transmission to the DNA.
RNase P has an interesting external guide sequence (EGS), which can be targeted to recognize and interfere with almost any cellular process.
The researchers designed a specific type of
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See AIDS • Page 2