The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • A3

Saturday, September 10, 2011 Orlando Sentinel News A3 Local News The University of Central Florida has placed on probation the sorority that is under review for its potential role in student Ann death. The sanction against the UCF chapter of the Delta Delta Delta sorority stems from an incident in Aprilthat involved alcohol-related misconduct and other issues. Hefferin, 18, was a new member of Delta Delta Delta. She had attended a fraternity party with a sorority sister on the evening of Aug. 24.

Early the next morning, her roommates found her unresponsive in their on-campus apartment and told police it was clear she had been drinking. Hefferin died later that day. Authorities are still trying to determine what caused the death during the first week of school. Meanwhile, UCF has been reviewing Delta Delta Delta and the fraternity that hosted the party, Sigma Chi, to determine what role, if any, they played in death. UCF officials have said alcohol was present at the fraternity house that night, in violation of university rules.

Starting this week, the Greek Council at UCF banned alcohol from events registered with the office of Fraternity and Sorority Lifeuntil further notice. Students will be able to drink at functions that had been previously approved, however. Student-government leaders also have been discussing introducing a policy that would encourage students to report medical emergencies related to alcohol abuse. Some students wait too long because they fear get in trouble with police and the university. The sanction against Delta Delta Delta was announced this weekin a letter from Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, and it puts the sorority on disciplinary probation through the spring semester, public records show.

Aspokeswoman for the sorority declined to comment about the sanction or ongoing review, saying only that, cooperating with the In April, someone connected to the sorority reserved 32rooms at Embassy Suites in downtown Orlando, indicating they were needed for a young group that would be in town for an Irish dance performance. Sorority members used the rooms and, after questioning, it became clear they had been rented for a spring-formal event. The hotel manager complained to UCF that the young women alcohol out to the pool area and underage drinking took being asked several times to stop the drinking and threats of removal from the property, the group allowed the drinking to take place behind closed according to the complaint. group was swearing in front of children and other guests and continued with this poor behavior well into the At one point, a man who was apparently part of the group streaked through the hotel and was removed. The revelry got so out of hand that Orlando police made some members of the party leave.

Because of noise complaints and other issues, Embassy Suites ended up compensating other guests a total of $1,167. In addition to putting Delta Delta Delta on probation, UCF ordered the sorority to write a letter of apology to the manager and come up with an agreement with him for making restitution. Sigma Chi also has been sanctioned for alcohol-related misconduct in recent years. It was put on probation for a year in 2009after the fraternity acknowledged that some members were intoxicated when they showed up to play an intramural basketball game. The game had to be forfeited.

UCF sorority on probation for incident at hotel By Denise-Marie Balona Staff Writer Ann Hefferin had just joined Delta Delta Delta sorority before she died. HEFFERIN FAMILY Jury selection in the public-corruption trial of former Orange County commissioner Mildred Fernandez is set to start on Halloween. Orange Circuit Judge C. Jeffery Arnold has blocked off two weeks for the trial. Assistant State Attorney Greg Tynan and defense attorney Gus Padron said it take more than a day-and-a-half to select a jury.

Charges against Fernandez include racketeering, bribery, unlawful compensation for official behavior and accepting illegal campaign contributions. She did not attend brief staus conference in the case, which surfaced in 2010. Colarossi Fernandez trial to start on Oct. 31 News briefing Photographs of Jennifer Kesse of Orlando and other missing Floridians will appear on electronic billboards across the state through this weekend as part of the 13th annual Florida Missing Day, scheduled for Monday in Tallahassee. In all, 28 missing people will be featured on billboard space donated by advertisers with the Florida Outdoor Advertising Association.

Kesse vanished from her condominium near Mall at Millenia in January 2006. Staff Billboards to spotlight Kesse, 27 others missing St. Cloud will make its city-employee health benefits available to domestic partners, including same-sex couples. The City Council approved the policy Thursday night by a 3-2 vote. Council member Jarom Fertic and Deputy Mayor Mickey Hopper opposed it.

Starting Oct. 1, domestic partners of city employees will receive the same medical and dental benefits available to spouses. Orlando, Kissimmee and Orange County also offer domestic- partner benefits to their employees. Busdeker St. Cloud OKs health care for domestic partners MIAMI A federal judge cleared the way Friday for a reform that supporters say could give voters much more say in who represents them in Congress.

If U.S. District Judge Ursula ruling overturned on appeal, the 27 congressional districts in election could be more competitive. They be designed to favor incumbents, and more communities would be kept together. But an attorney hired by the Republican leaders of the Florida House who have spent $2.7 million in tax money fighting the fair-districts amendment say the measure violates the U.S. Constitution.

Currently, many congressional districts sprawl across regions to pick up pockets of voters, fracturing cities into multiple pieces represented by different lawmakers. That results in districts that overwhelmingly favor Democrats or Republicans but rarely are competitive between the two parties. The situation could change with ruling that voter-approved reforms to the way Florida draws its congressional districts violate the U.S. Constitution. Ungaro issued the decision after hearing arguments in a case brought by opponents of an amendment approved by 63 percent of Florida voters last year.

U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, along with the Florida House of Representatives, sought to have the amendment to the Florida Constitution tossed out. Diaz-Balart and Brown said outside the federal courthouse in Miami that they were disappointed but not deterred. They vowed to appeal the lower court ruling, and Diaz-Balart said he be surprised if the issue ultimately is decided by the U.S.

Supreme Court. Dan Gelber, a former Democratic state senator who is general counsel for the group that sponsored the fair-districts amendment, said Diaz-Balart and Brown have a right to appeal their loss, but he hopes the House Republican leadership ends its involvement with the case. After an hour of arguments for and against the constitutional amendment, Ungaro took a break of about five minutes. When the judge returned, she said she heard anything new or persuasive from the lawyers representing Diaz-Balart, Brown and the Florida House. As a result, she said she signed a 22-page summary judgment order in favor of the voter-approved amendments based on the extensive court filings she had reviewed before court arguments.

Pamela Goodman of Gulf Stream in Palm Beach County, first vice president and redistricting chairwoman for the Florida League of Women Voters, which supports the fair-districts reforms, praised the decision. hope that they seeking to block the see their argument is very she said. people have decision affects only the fair- districts amendment dealing with congressional districts. A separate amendment, also approved by voters, deals with state House and state Senate districts. Both are designed to reduce the role politics plays in drawing seats for lawmakers.

In the past, the majority party that controls redistricting in the GOP draws boundaries that give its candidates an advantage in future elections. When Diaz-Balart and Brown first filed their lawsuit, their central argument was that it would make it harder to draw congressional districts with large minority populations and thus might decrease the number of minority members of Congress. JUDGEUPHOLDSREFORMS IN DRAWING OF DISTRICTS By Anthony Man Staff Writer Sunday, as Bob Peraza stands near ground zero, I suspect have a momentary but overpowering sense of vu. Even if much has changed since his first visit. Since that wretched Tuesday a decade ago when New York City burned and the soul suffered.

Sunday, the Clermont man and other mourners as happens every anniversary of the Sept. 11attacks that toppled the World Trade twin towers will gather to remember. Relatives will perform a grim roll call of the nearly 3,000 names of the dead. Including firstborn son. Ten years ago, Peraza, then a systems engineer with Procter Gamble in Ohio, was at work when a knock came at his office door about 8:50 that morning.

His secretary. Ithink you should come and look at this. What Peraza saw blazing across the TV screen the aftermath of American Airlines Flight kamikaze run into the North Tower of the World Trade Center like a King Kong movie, a plane hitting a big The big building where his son worked. Peraza bolted home, wondering on what floor his boy, a bond trader with Cantor Fitzgerald, worked. The doomed jet slit open the building between the 93rd and 99th floors.

His 30-year-old son worked on the 104th floor. Peraza, then 58, and his wife Suzanne, then 55, hunkered down by the television. As they watched, first one tower and then the other collapsed. They traveled to New York the next day, clinging to long odds that their son would be pulled from the rubble. By Friday, they had endured the heartbreak of a counterfeit database which purported to provide survivor information the grim realization that their name was absent on survivor lists and hospital tallies.

By Sunday, threadbare optimism vanished into the dust that coated the city. had lost hope that he would be found he says. Weeks later, a death certificate provided provisional proof of his hunch. After that, life for the Perazas ground forward in low gear. The strength the college sweethearts drew from each other helped them stay in the present for their surviving son and daughter and their grandchildren.

Their oldest child have been very upset if we had had just wilted Bob says. Far from it. He has lobbied for the Patriot Act. And during the past decade, raised nearly $300,000 for a pair of scholarships in their name, including one for needy kids to play rugby at St. Bonaventure University in New York, where he had excelled at the sport that captivated him while abroad in South Africa the year an imprisoned Nelson Mandela was freed.

Two years after the towers fell, the Perazas were freed from lingering doubts about their fate. Some of his remains were identified from DNA in 2003 and again in 2006. Their son who had been contemplating new furniture and marriage now rests in two urns in Oak Hill Cemetery in Clermont. Today, Bob says his family life much That mean time has drained meaning from 9-11. should be like Pearl Harbor, in that we were Bob says, the difference is we were attacked by Islamic jihadists who are continuing the war on terror.

This is part of history, part of our life. We will never forget 9-11and where our son was that Sunday, during the ceremony at the National September 11Memorial, he will unfold a list and put names to 10 of the men, women and children, who perished with plans unfulfilled. In that sorrowful moment, afather and a doleful nation will remember where Robert David Peraza was that September day. or 407-420-5095 Suzanne and Robert Peraza of Clermont framed New York Marathon memorabilia of their son, Robert David Peraza, who died on 9-11. RICARDO RAMIREZ PHOTOGRAPHER Dad to call name in 9-11 ceremony Darryl E.

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