Lawrence’s sex offender battle in the NYT

¢ The 2005/2006 fight over whether to locate Leroy Hendricks to a group home in or near Lawrence was part of a major article over the weekend in the New York Times_In Mr. Hendricks’s case, residents of Lawrence, where he was initially to be moved, collected petitions. “You can tell me that he’s old, but as long as he can move his hands and his arms, he can hurt another child,” said Missi Pfeifer, 37, a mother of three who led the petition drive with her two sisters and mother.__Then officials in Leavenworth County, picked as an alternative, said the choice violated county zoning laws. Mr. Hendricks lasted two days there, in a house off a road not far from a pasture of horses, before a judge ordered him removed.__State officials said they had no choice but to move Mr. Hendricks back to a facility on the grounds of a different state hospital, where he still is.__Through a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, Mr. Hendricks declined to speak to The New York Times.__Two years ago, he told The Lawrence Journal-World that he would be living in a group home “if somebody hadn’t opened their damn mouth,” adding, “I’m stuck here till something happens, and I don’t know when that will be.”_¢ A recently released study about college students shows they’re more narcissistic than those of previous generations. Nancy Baym, KU associate professor of communication studies, tells the Chicago Tribune that current college students are part of a transformation in communication of going from being watchers of media content to creators of content._ “They’re good at being an audience, but not at being the center of attention,” says Nancy Baym, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. “They’re thinking about, ‘Who am I and how can I show myself to the world?’ They’re not thinking about parents, teachers, employers and all these other people who can see this.”_¢ Advertisements in Washington, D.C., aimed at only members of Congress are the subject of a story in today’s Virginian-Pilot. The story quotes Burdett Loomis, KU professor of political science._”They don’t spend this amount of money willy-nilly,” said Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist who got interested in the ads when he worked in Washington during the 1980s.__”But yet, who’s going to buy one of these things?”_