A Political Prairie Fire : Campus life: Critics say KU student president Darren Fulcher should be recalled because he hit his girlfriend. But others say racism is the motivating factor.

LAWRENCE, Kan. —  Darren Fulcher is learning early on that life in the public spotlight doesn’t leave much in shadow.

What used to be his private life now lies open for inspection by the 27,000 students at the University of Kansas, its faculty and staff, as well as alumni and interested observers across the state. Soon he may be the object of a campuswide referendum to evaluate the quality of his character.

Students are circulating petitions on a recall election to determine whether the 23-year-old president of the KU Student Senate should serve out his term now that it has become known that he struck his girlfriend in the face last February.

Hitting a woman is bad enough. But if you are a student politician who has built a coalition of minorities on campus that includes gays, blacks, American Indians and women’s groups, the act can destroy your reputation for fastidious political correctness.

Inclusiveness, Fulcher’s supporters say, was the theme of his campaign last spring. Yet far from uniting the diverse KU student body, Fulcher’s presidency has ignited a prairie fire of mistrust and misunderstanding. In particular, the feminists Fulcher invited to join his coalition are angry that their candidate neglected to tell them he was a batterer.

It doesn’t help--or doesn’t hurt, depending on whom you consult--that Darren Fulcher is black, the first African-American to be elected to the university’s highest student position. (Only 678 of KU’s students are black.) In addition, the university student newspaper bungled the reporting of the Fulcher incident, infuriating students on all sides of the issue.

Fulcher has never denied that he struck his girlfriend, Audra Glavas, in a moment of anger. But, he argues, that has nothing to do with his ability to serve as president. He paid restitution, sought counseling and performed community service. The law asks no more of him; why, he wonders, should the Student Senate expel him from office, too?

Nevertheless, Fulcher, a senior history and economics major, remains determined to contest his removal. In his small office in the Student Senate suite, he reflects on the circumstances that have led to this.

“I think it has something to do with race,” Fulcher says quietly. “Any time a black person is in a position of power, it allows racist people to come out of the woodwork.” Then he adds: “But I don’t think it’s a race issue. It’s a political issue, and what’s right and wrong.”

Fulcher and Clarence Thomas might have plenty to talk about.

On April 11, Fulcher and his Impact! coalition won the election for Student Senate by a handy margin. At the time student voters were unaware that on Feb. 11, during a domestic quarrel, Fulcher had struck Glavas, chipping one of her teeth.

Fulcher had been arrested the following day on misdemeanor battery charges. In March, he had entered into a diversion agreement under which he said he would perform community service and pay $443 in dental expenses for Glavas, plus court costs. Upon completion of those requirements, prosecution would be dropped.

The voters were also unaware that Fulcher’s supervisor at a Salvation Army homeless shelter, where he worked, had accused him in March of forging her signature on a time card. At issue were nine hours of work, paid at $4.20 an hour. In a later confidential meeting of students and faculty, Fulcher agreed to repay the money. Students didn’t find out about the time-card incident until it was reported May 2 in the University Daily Kansan, the student newspaper.

They didn’t learn of the battery incident until they got back to school in late August, although the Kansan’s editors had known about the story weeks earlier. The Kansan’s delay in publishing the battery story, and its subsequent treatment of it, have earned it campuswide scorn and the enmity of many blacks. One student called it “a horrible newspaper.”

“Why didn’t they report it when it happened?” asked another. “They shouldn’t have waited.”

Indeed, why the Kansan’s editors sat on the story is a subject of embarrassment around its newsroom.

“It was a learning experience, and not altogether a good one,” says faculty adviser Tom Eblen, who adds that student reporters did not do a thorough enough background check on the Student Senate candidates in the spring. And when student editors found out in July about Fulcher’s battery, they decided not to publish the story because it was out of date.

It was a judgment call that a professional newspaper editor might have made differently. Soon, rumors of Fulcher’s behavior were sweeping the campus. Somebody posted a copy of his court record in the student union. The story finally broke on student radio station KJHK on Aug. 20.

The Kansan weighed in Aug. 28 with two front-page stories, one explaining why the paper had not acted sooner. It followed up with almost daily doses of Fulcher news, including informal opinion polls and an editorial urging him to resign.

Many black students think that the Kansan, as well as the majority of students, are out to get Fulcher because he is black, and they have organized demonstrations supporting him. One day a group of 50 black students dumped 1,000 copies of the paper on its newsroom floor, declaring: “We are returning your trash.”

James Baucom, a black junior, has been rallying students to support Fulcher, saying that he believes a lot of the “get Darren” sentiment is politically motivated.

“Student Senate used to always be European-Americans from the Greek system,” Baucom says. “In the last two or three years, Student Senate has become more representative of the student body. Those old groups that used to have a lot of power have lost majority control, and they’re trying to get it back.”

On Sept. 12, the Student Senate voted 42 to 19 to remove Fulcher as president. But he refused to go, asserting that the Senate lacked any provision in its bylaws to force him out. He has appealed his case to the university Judicial Board. That body, a nonpartisan conflict-resolution panel, could take months to reach a decision. In the meantime, students outraged by Fulcher’s behavior are circulating petitions for a recall election.

If it comes to that, everybody on campus will have the opportunity to pass judgment on Darren Fulcher’s character and fitness for office.

Several students are talking lightheartedly at a lunch table in the campus student union. When the conversation turns, as it often does these days, to Darren Fulcher, they carefully choose their words.

“I think the decision to take him out of office is valid,” says Ian Hurst, a senior from New Orleans. “Not only on the basis that he lost his self-control but that he lied on numerous occasions.

“We all have expectations that what our officeholders do should be morally correct,” Hurst says. “There should be moral standards that public officials abide by. You don’t steal from the government. You don’t beat a woman.”

But when it’s pointed out that many on campus think the moral issue is a bluff to drive a black man from office, the three students, all white, shift uncomfortably.

Chris Ruoff, a senior from St. Louis, argues: “Some people say, ‘I’m so tired of people making it a racial issue.’ But there’s so much racism all around, if you could actually vomit every time you see an example of racism, you’d be in a constant state of regurgitation.”

That may be an apt description of the state of many KU students, black and white, male and female, politically correct and incorrect. Much of their anger over l’affaire Fulcher has found its most articulate expression in the Kansan.

“Fulcher should have realized that white political leaders are eagerly looking for reasons to discredit and destroy African-American leaders at every level,” wrote Cedric Lockett in a guest editorial.

Rich Bennett, a journalism student, wrote: “If the Kansan, or for that matter the KU campus, is really racist, then why did they support Fulcher as president in the first place?”

Frenchette Garth, president of Zeta Phi Beta, a black sorority, said she was “opposed to the notion that because Mr. Fulcher did batter a woman, it makes him unsympathetic to women’s issues. Who better to know the sins of the action but someone who has suffered from the problem, got counseling and is committed to remedying the problems for others?”

But that argument holds no appeal for Kristin Lange, a founding member of the Women’s Student Union. Fulcher approached her to join his coalition, and she campaigned actively for him. Now she feels embarrassed.

“There’s a large sense of betrayal for me personally and for a lot of women,” Lange says. “I mean, I misrepresented him to a lot of people, I feel.”

Darren Fulcher says he ran for student body president to do something historic.

“I wanted to bring people together that had never been put together before. I wanted to put the white Greek organizations into a coalition with the minority organizations. I wanted the gay and lesbian organizations and Women’s Student Union. I just wanted to include everyone in a broad-based coalition where everyone felt like they had a part. They could gain from me being the president.”

His eyes sparkle as he describes the role he wrote for himself. He doesn’t like the bogeyman part he finds himself playing, but he’s proud that he’s kept his cool and has spoken frankly about his problems to other students.

“I respect myself more now than I ever have in my life,” he says earnestly. “And as I told the Student Senate, it doesn’t matter if you say you don’t respect me, but you have no choice to respect me, because I respect myself.”

Although he is short--maybe 5 foot 6 on a good day--Fulcher has the bulk of a man who works out in the gym and the charm of one who’s eager to please.

“I’m learning who I am,” he says. “That’s probably the most invigorating discovery that anyone could ever have. These people, they don’t know who they are.”

He defends not revealing the battery charge by explaining that it “happened before I was student body president,” and that, by agreement with Glavas’ parents, “we would keep it private.”

The hardest part, he says softly, was going to talk to her parents after he had hit her. Her father helped him come to terms with his anger at life, he says, adding, “He and I have always had a good relationship.”

Though he and Glavas are no longer dating, they still are on good terms, he says. He resents the Kansan most for dragging her name into the public eye. Glavas has declined to speak to the press.

Fulcher thinks the Kansan’s coverage has been “vengeful and vindictive.”

Why, after all this, is he still fighting for his position? “Because I’m not a quitter.” But does he feel persecuted? Not really, he says: “That’s just the way the system works.”