The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 33

Saturday, Oct 23, 1993 i CM til; prog Metro in brief i i i Mi Olympic Watch Atlanta as hub forAmtrak: Is it just blowing smoke? Georgia in brief C8 Obituaries CIO The Atlanta Journal C6 i iiienudnmjuibuujuuii Cll Legal notices i Piange urgedfor GEORGIA STATE REVISITED Campos on new course mm 1 i JEAN SHIFRIN Staff Up in smoke: Tom and Pat Hackley lost $750,000 to Leland Fitzgerald. "I think he's a sociopath," Pat Hackley said. Plan would eliminate school board's role mmtmt By Betsy White sJaff writer The advisory board that helps raise money for the city's public radio and television stations is campaigning plasds guilty fi a in Schemes may have cost victims up to $14 milliori By Mark Silk STAFF WRTTER Under the grim gaze of 35 of his victims, Tucker accountant E. Leland Fitzgerald pleaded guilty Friday to swindling them out of $6.4 million. "It's worth $2 for the parking garage, just see his face," said Guenter Wackenhut, 64, a re-1 tired Gwinnett businessman who said Fitzgeral had taken Jiim for half a million dollars.

But Fitzgerald, a bear of a man with short-1 cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, v. i i 1' v. Hope after last year's protest: Students and administrators are encouraged about the new African American studies department and overhaul of the student services division. By Robert J. Vickers STAFF WRITER For two days in November, Georgia State University split into angry camps as about 60 students took over administrative offices to protest a racial slur by a student.

Before GSU President Carl V. Patton was able to negotiate an end to the sit-in, the protesters had aired several larger issues that were bothering them. After the sit-in, Andrew Kearney, president of GSU's Interfra-ternity Council, had written Patton criticizing him for caving in to terroristic tactics by acceding to several demands that served more as acts of "revenge" than of education. Atmosphere 'a whole lot better Nearly a year later, the protesters' core concerns have been addressed. The centerpiece of these, the creation of an African American studies department, was approved by the state Board of Regents last week.

And students and administrators appear almost giddily optimistic about where Georgia State is going. "The atmosphere is a whole lot better," said student association President Levoyd Carter, a protester from last fall. "For the most part everything has been going well. It's just like it's flipped totally. Many of the people who were involved in the protest are now active in key leadership positions." Now Kearney looks back at the turmoil as a necessary agent of change.

"Before there is change, there tends to be a lot of chaos, and it takes a slap in the face to change." Perhaps the most significant changes are the restructuring of the student services division and creation of the African American studies department. Dean of Students William R. Baggett, one of the targets of the protesters' criticism, resigned in February and currently teaches in the College of Education. Deans Carole Pearson and H. King But-termore, who worked with Baggett, have been reassigned to other divi- snoweu no sign oi re- mnna on1 AanMnaA to make any state- II to get the stations taken away from the Atlanta school board and transferred tp4an independent community board.

A letter sent to 13,000 past contributors from the Public Broadcasting Association of Greater Atlanta Inc. (PBA) urges recipients to petition the Federal Communications Commission to transfer control of WPBA (Channel 30) and WABE-FM 90 to a "community coalition." The stations are in "critical danger," according to the letter. Incorporated in 1979, the PBA board was initially appointed by the school board. Now the PBA board's own officers choose new members to serve six-year terms. Members include civic leaders, broadcasting professors, lawyers and educators.

The stations have cut programming and staff because fund-raising efforts have fallen far short of projections. The school board provides a $1 million-a-year subsidy, but WPBA was recently forced to stop purchasing the popular "MacNeilLehrer NewsHour" and fine arts shows. Solving two problems Transferring the stations to a new, independent board would solve two problems, said Alf Nucifora, a marketing consultant and member of the PBA board. First, a carefully chosen board could run the stations more effectively, Nucifora said. (The school system, for example, has paid fines and legal fees for firing the stations' general manager, Adrienne Dowling, in a way the courts judged unjustified.

She was reinstated last week by court order.) Second, Nucifora said, better-run stations could raise more money to give audience members and potential corporate donors the quality of programming they want, which would in turn boost fund-raising. It has not been determined how the "community coalition" that PBA is suggesting would be selected. Sandra Walker, public information officer for Atlanta schools, said the district is aggressively pursuing its own plans to make the stations jffiore successful by creating a new coalition with Georgia Tech and Clark (Atlanta University. The new arrange-ijment will answer requests for more public affairs and educational shows. Photos by DAVID TUUS Staff ment in entering his negotiated plea to 79 counts of theft by taking, securities fraud and operating a Ponzi scheme.

DeKalb Superior Court Judge Robert Mallis sentenced him to 20 years in prison, plus 20 on parole, in what District Attorney J. Tom Morgan called the largest case of white-collar crime in DeKalb his Georgia State University student Kellie Walker studies as others head to class. Nearly a year has passed since protesters held a sit-in. E. Leland Fitzgerald was sentenced to 20 years on securities fraud) and other charges.

dissatisfied with the1' tory. None of the mon-. ey has been recovered, and some victims said they were sentence. "Isn't there some way to get him to tell where the money is, like to threaten his life?" one of; them asked Morgan afterward. "Pull out his toenails until he talks," said another.

Prosecutors and investigators from the retary of state's office say they don't believe1 there is any money to be recovered. Fitzgerald mainly operated by investing money in long- shot speculations like oil wells, then raised addi- Please see FRAUD, CIO Dean of Students Kurt J. Keppler (right) and James Scott, vice president of enrollment and student services, are part of the new changes. living history Looking for Lady Luck on the Savannah Lady Gambling ship draws scores of passengers i 4, ports in states such as Georgia where casino gambling is illegal to international waters, beyond the reach of state statutes. But since the federal statute doesn't specify how a ship's principal activity is determined, similar operations in other states have gotten around the loophole by offering dinner and entertainment.

Cruises on the Savannah Lady, which initially will run six nights a week from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., cost $35 per person on weekdays and $45 on weekends. The cost includes dinner a buffet of roasted turkey, shrimp Creole, stir-fried vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, a salad bar, several soups and assorted desserts served in a lower-deck dining room. For entertainment, the passengers had a karaoke sing-along. And, oh, yes gambling.

Most of Friday's travelers a largely middle-class group that included a woman celebrating her 33rd birthday, a couple celebrating their 33rd wedding anniversary and a group of elementary schoolteachers from Athens had Bible Belt gambling backgrounds and expectations to match. "I have never in my life done anything like this," said Mary Jane Sherrod, a school bus driver from Savannah who vowed that if she won any money she- would quit playing immediately. "I'd go? sit in the corner and keep it. I wouldn't! give it back." Lessons for beginners 4 For novices such as Sherrod, the La- dy's staff offered gambling lessons dur-j ing the 90-minute cruise out to the three- mile limit. Some didn't need them.

Sherrod's husband, Johnny, said he had brought "a couple thousand" dollars that he was prepared to spend, but had given himself a limit. "I'm not going td lose the house," he said. "They can have the title to the car, though." Others' big dreams centered on small change. While she waited in line to board, Su sanna Williams of Atlanta eyed the shad owy outlines of a row of slot machines behind dark-tinted windows on the top deck. "I just love to hear those Williams said, grinning.

"Yeah," added her mother, Ethel Hayward of Hardeeville, S.C. "Rattle; rattle, rattle." Staff writer Jingle Dirts contribute i to this articUf, i i i a a By Kay Williams Graves FOR THE JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION Savannah Some passengers turned out for the food and entertainment, but most who sailed on the maiden voyage of Georgia's first gambling cruise ship Friday were hoping to become high rollers on the high seas. "We're not leaving till we own the boat," joked Cecil Smith of Stone Mountain. Smith and his wife, Nickie, were among an estimated 150 to 170 passengers who set sail at sunset from Savannah's River Street aboard the Savannah Lady, a 200-foot vessel officially billed as a "dinner cruise ship." The Lady offers a full-service casino with crap tables, roulette wheels and other games of chance, which open only when the ship reaches international waters three miles off the Georgia coast. Federal law bans gambling as the "principal activity" on American-flagged ships that operate so-called "cruises to nowhere," running from JOEY IVANSCO Staff A day for smiles: Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett (second from i right) poses with historical war characters at the dedication Friday of j' the new Atlanta History Museum.

The museum, which opens today, tells the story of all of Atlanta's people from Cherokee Indian settlements to the international city of today. The million facility is one of the largest in the nation devoted to urban and suburban history. Details in Leisure..