SPOKANE – Law student Ashley Horne never thought her anti-abortion club would be rejected by Gonzaga University, one of the Northwest’s leading Catholic institutions.

But the school’s Student Bar Association this fall refused to recognize her Pro-Life Law Caucus as a university-sponsored group, ruling that a policy allowing only Christians to hold leadership positions was a form of discrimination.

The issue is not the group’s stance on abortion, said SBA President Albert Guadagno. Leadership positions, he said, should be open to all students.

About 45 percent of Gonzaga’s 5,800 students are not Catholic, and campus spokesman Peter Tormey said school administrators support the SBA ruling.

“Any club seeking funds must not discriminate. This club has that discriminatory clause,” Tormey said.

Covington

Deputy shoots, injures man armed with hatchet: A King County sheriff’s deputy shot and wounded a man after he threw a hatchet at officers and was seen with a firearm, a sheriff’s spokesman said. The 34-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center on Saturday evening. He suffered a single bullet wound to the shoulder, said a sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. John Urquhart. Neighbors called police Saturday evening to report someone was breaking car windows. Officers found the suspect a few blocks away. He threw a hatchet and fled on foot, Urquhart said. When they found him a second time, Urquhart said the man was armed and fled again. “The third time one of our officers shot him,” Urquhart said.

Kirkland

Charges dropped against woman whose son brought gun to school: Charges of reckless endangerment have been dropped against a woman whose sixth-grade son took her loaded .357-caliber Magnum handgun to school and threatened people with it. A Kirkland Municipal Court judge on Friday dismissed the charge of reckless endangerment against Amy Lynn Delrosario-Levitt, 32, citing insufficient evidence. She was accused of leaving the gun unlocked and failing to report it missing. The boy brought the loaded Ruger to A.G. Bell Elementary School last spring and used it to threaten other youngsters. The boy, now 13, pleaded guilty in August to several felonies. He was sentenced Aug. 27 to 55 to 65 months at the Echo Glen juvenile facility.

Oregon

Part of barge under tow breaks off in ocean: The tugboat Richard Brusco was merrily on its way to San Francisco this weekend, making its way past Newport, when crew members discovered they’d left something important behind: the back of the 180-foot barge they were towing. The discovery came after fishermen contacted U.S. Coast Guard officers Saturday morning to report spotting part of a self-contained hull adrift in the ocean six miles northwest of the mouth of the Columbia River. It’s not clear how, but sometime after the tug left Cathlamet, Wash., at 4 p.m. Friday and crossed the Columbia River bar, about 70 feet of the barge’s rear portion sheared off. The tug turned around and deposited its remaining 110 feet of barge in Astoria. The back of the barge, which no cargo or passengers, was safely recovered by another tug.

Roseburg soldier involved in Hussein’s capture: A soldier from Roseburg was one of the 120 military personnel involved in the Iraqi night raid that resulted in the capture of Saddam Hussein. U.S. Army Sgt. David Forney, a Calvary scout serving in the 4th Infantry out of Fort Hood, Texas, told family members that the experience was, “one of the scariest things he has ever encountered.” Forney, 22, was the sergeant in charge of securing the hole where Hussein was discovered in a farmhouse cellar on an orchard 10 miles south of Tikrit, said his father.

From Herald news services