TRANSPORTATION MIXUP FORCES CANCELLATION OF GIOVANNI EVENT

Sunday night's scheduled lecture by poet Nikki Giovanni at Southeast Missouri State University was canceled because the driver who was to have driven her to Cape Girardeau from St. Louis was late getting her, a university spokesperson said Monday.

The spokesperson, Debra Mitchell-Braxton, assistant director of minority affairs, said the driver spent two hours trying to find the place at which she was to have been picked up. As a result, the driver did not get her until 6:18 p.m., said Mitchell-Braxton.

The lecture here was to have begun at 7:30 p.m. The drive from St. Louis is a more-than-two-hour drive.

Giovanni called the university twice shortly before 6:30 p.m., for instructions on what to do, but got no answers, said Mitchell-Braxton. A dispatcher for the transportation company that was to have driven her to Cape Girardeau then called the university's Department of Public Safety and explained the situation, and it was decided then that Giovanni not make the trip, said Mitchell Braxton.