Central Florida Future, Vol. 26 No. 25, March 9, 1994

              Lady Knights begin TAAC tournament play tomorrow— see sports, page 28
Central Florida Future
Vol. 26 No. 25
Serving The University Of Central Florida Since 1968
March 9,1994
Men win TAAC, on to national tournament
□ Men's basketball
team wins right to go
to NCAA Tournament
by TONY HUTCHESON
Staff Writer	
In the spirit of Dick Vitale:
Get your tuxedos ready Central
Florida, because UCF is going to
the "Big Dance," baby!
Before a crowd of 2,389 at the
UCF Arena and in front of a live,
national television audience
watching the finals on ESPN, the
UCF Golden Knights made history
by defeating Stetson University in
the Trans America Athletic
Conference championship
Saturday 70-67. With the win, UCF
earned its first ever spot in the
NCAA Division I tournament.
"In the past few years we haven't
had this kind of excitement," said
junior guard Darryl Davis. "This is
what you dream about as a kid."
"It's obviously exciting. It's
great for the school," said head
coach Kirk Speraw.
UCF basketball has been void
of excitement since the team
entered Division I in 1984. The
Knights have not had a winning
season until this year. However,
with the addition of Speraw this
year and some transfer players, the
team has gone where no UCF squad
has ever gone before.
"This is what all of us are in this
for," said Speraw.
Speraw's emphasis on defense,
DeHoog/Future
Chuck Roberts, center for UCF's men's basketball team, celebrates the Knights' 70-67 victory over
the Stetson Hatters Saturday. With the win, UCF advanced to the NCAA tournament.
which he brought from his tenure as
assistant coach at the University of
Florida, boosted the team this season.
Speraw also brought his experience
from Pensacola Junior College where
hewent82-21 overthreeyears,earning
National Junior College Coach of the
Year honors in 1990.
"I've been very fortunate to
have good players," said Speraw
on his head coaching success. "It's
important to have people who are
willing to be unselfish."
The Knights had to win two
games to get to the TAAC
Championship Game. Thursday
they played solid defense against a
bigger Mercer University and
cruised to a 90-68 victory.
Friday was not so easy as they
faced Centenary College, the
number four seed. In the up-tempo
mode that both squads like to play,
UCF led by as much as 16 points.
The Gents, however, did not give
up and closed the gap to four points
with 41 seconds in the contest.
But, the Knights held them off for
a 93-89 victory.
See NCAA, page 24
Hazing—a national p
□ Hazing has evolved
from physical to
mental abuse.
College Press Service
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. —
Michael Davis hoped one day to
win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting,
a dream that was cut tragically
short by a beating allegedly
administered by his own fraternity
brothers.
Davis, 25, a junior in journalism
and staff writer at Southeast
Missouri State University's student
newspaper, The Capaha Arrow,
died Feb. 15 of blunt trauma to the
head. Kappa Alpha Psi pledges
told police Davis had collapsed
while running through a gantlet of
punches at a football field. Instead
of being taken to a hospital, he was
carried to an off-campus apartment
where he died.
Family members said it was not
the first time Davis had been beaten,
and they had begged the young
man to give up pledging for the
fraternity after he returned home
one day with a scratch on his nose.
"When I asked him why he
wanted to pledge this fraternity, he
said, 'Ma, when you're pledged,
you have to take it,'"his mother,
Edith Davis, told reporters.
As of Feb. 23, seven fraternity
members had been charged with
involuntary manslaughter and
hazing, three others face hazing
charges, and six alumni fraternity
members were charged with
hazing, said Ann Hayes, the
university's news bureau director.
Police are continuing their
investigation.
because of hazing.
As the recent incident shows,
hazing is alive and well in
American colleges and
universities. Although physical
punishment actually has been on
the wane in recent years as a result
of increased awareness and
prosecution, more insidious,
"invisible" mental abuse of
fraternity and sorority pledges
 St	
Things have gone underground on many
campuses because national fraternities
have taken very strong, positive steps to
eliminate in [hazing].
—Larry Lunsford
director of student affairs, University of Florida
A Feb. 22 memorial service was
held on campus. "I think the whole
campus here is mourning the
death," Hayes said.
Davis was a dedicated student
hoping for a bright future in
newspapers. "He seemed to know
where he was going and what he
was doing in journalism," Hayes
said.
University President Kala
Stroup ordered the Kappa Alpha
Psi chapter permanently banished
from campus. The group had been
suspended in 1988 for a year
ifa
continues.
Stiffer, anti-hazing regulations
in recent years — 38 states outlaw
it — have made a difference in
deterring physical abuse of pledges,
said Larry Lunsford, director of
student affairs at Florida
International University in Miami.
Until the last 20 years, incidents in
which pledges were publicly
humiliated, paddled, forced to
consume often deadly amounts of
alcohol, beaten to death, or
See HAZING, page 8
Solares/ Future
Jennifer Alvarez wins the Ms, UCF Pageant Saturday night
at the student center auditorium.
In Features
Who's going to win an
Oscar? Who knows, but
here are our picks ...
Page R7
In Opinion
Banning beer commercials
won't do anything to stop
drinking...
Page 11
News
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Sports
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