THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Friday February 24,1978
Lawrence, Kansas
The University of Kansas
1. 90 No 100
Walking was particularly hazardous yesterday, after warm temperatures finally began to melt ice and water. Pools of slush and muddy water abounded, making pedestrians an
easy target for a doucing by passing cars. Mary Tefft, a member of the library staff, barely escaped a muddy soaking as she walked by the Chi Omega fountain.
Near miss
Basic education concerns House
Staff Writer
By DIRCK STEIMEL
TOPEKA-Kansas legislators are disturbed about continued reports of high school graduates lacking basic educational skills.
The Kansas House debated for two hours yesterday a bill that would establish competency-based education in Kansas for school year. The bill comes up for a vote today.
"We're getting tired of banding out education funds only to hear that lots of kids can't even read and write after school," Dean Sheler, D-Mimela, said yesterday.
COMPETENCE-CYBASE education would require students in Kauai to pass a stair-master test.
The House bill, which is sponsored by State Rep. William Reardon, D-Kansas City, would require all eighth grade students to take a test in snelling, reapipls and mathematics.
If the student did not pass the test in his eighth grade year, he would continue taking a similar test each year throughout high school until he passed.
THE COMPETENCE-based education bill would give the state no authority to hold students back in school or to withhold them from students falling the basic skills test.
However, students who failed the competency test throughout high school would have to take remedial courses.
Reardon said 20 school districts would be designated for a pilot program in the coming school year and in 1979-80, the bill would go into effect throughout Kansas.
STATE TEP. Victor Kearns Jr., MRerium, said he was opposed to the standard test called for in the bill because it limited differences in children's development.
"This is a popular problem and everyone is rushing to address it, but this bill ignores different rates of growth and maturity in children." Kearns said.
The hill would require school districts to provide remedial programs to help students.
FUNDING FOR these remedial programs brought the sharpest debate to the House floor.
State Rep. James Loweher, R-Emorya, said the state should help the district pays for the programs because otherwise they would have to fund regular budgets to fund remedial classes.
House minority leader Wendell Lady, R-Overland Park, said that legislators should realize that the state would eventually be required to fund the program.
BUT STATE Rcp. Rep. Flew Weaver, D-Baxter Springs, said paying school districts for remedial education was, in effect, paying districts to produce inferior students.
Permission sought to build underground home
Once a student passed it, he would not have to take it again.
Staff Writer
A rural Eudora man wants to live underground. He can't, however, unless the Douglas County Commission grants its permission.
By CAROL HUNTER
The man, Kenneth Sloan, Route 1, Eudora, said yesterday that he wanted to build a concrete house and cover it with insulation and then dirt.
If they aren't educating them in the first
EDUCATION page 12
The obstacle he faces is county zoning regulations, which prohibit underground
However, the commission pledged to consult its engineers and engineers of other counties to see whether rules allowing underground houses could be made.
BEVERLY BRADLEY, commissioner,
said, "I think it's time it was done. We're
going to be met more and more by this kind of request."
Sloan has drawn plans for a three bedroom, 45-yard-34 house with a 48-yard-88 apartment.
"It will heat the concrete floor during the day and then at night the concrete floor will
The glass of the greenhouse will provide solar energy to help heat the house, he said.
Staff Writer
Harper to back busing changes
Rv MELISSA THOMPSON
A Student Senate committee, when it convenes this month, will be told to improve the KU bus system, Mike Harper, introduced student body president said yesterday.
Harper, who took office last week, said he had finished listing his priorities for Senate committee action and improving the bus system was high on his list.
Two other projects he had wanted completed by the end of the semester were the redevelopment of an instructor-curriculum evaluation survey, similar to back, and a study of possible changes in game setting at football and basketball games.
Harper said he wanted the Student Services Committee, which will be in charge of evaluating the campus bus service, to examine overcrowding and the shortage of buses and to consider negotiating a three-year contract with the Lawrence Bus Co.
THE SENATE currently has a one-year contract with the company, which, Harper said, was based mostly on a personal relationship between the company's manager, Dune Ogle and the current Executive Committee chairman, Steve McMurry.
"It's not really a business relationship," Harper said.
He said the current contract allowed for errors in the Senate's judgment about peak electricity rates.
loose arrangement had worked to the Senate's advantage.
However, Harper said a stricter, long-term contract with stipulations about weekend service, extended routes and more buses would improve the system.
A stricter contract also would help avoid problems that might arise from a driver's strike or any other breach of contract. The current agreement is loose enough, Harper said, that it would have questionable effects in the event of problems.
THE REDEVELOPMENT of the instructor-curriculum evaluation was a carryover project from last year's Senate he wanted to see completed. Harper said
radiate heat through the rest of the house," he said.
THE CONCRETE will protect against heat loss, he said.
The evaluation project has been given to The BUDU Institute.
"It takes a long time for concrete to get hot and a long time for it to cool," Sloan said. "And by putting four inches of insulation on the outside of the concrete wall, you have almost a thermos bottle effect. The concrete has become very warm, we are going to burn up in there in the winter."
See BUSING page 10
The house will be built above ground to prevent drainage problems, he said.
"FIRST ILL put up the house," he said.
Then essentially I'll dig my lake and take a drive on it.
Sloan said he thought underground houses had been prohibited because only the poor could do it.
"They put tar paper on the roof and nothing else," he said. "They were con-
"I think that an underground house can be passing to the eye. I has in mind planting a tree."
Some people dislike underground houses, he said, because they just prefer being inside.
"They like to be above ground so they can see on all four sides," he said. "They like to go up to the sky."
Underground houses will be the living quarters of the future, he said.
"Energy was cheap," he said. "There was
go to underground. There is now."
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Capsules From the Associated Press, United Press International
Egyptian peace position weakening
JERUSALEM—A pessimistic view of the chances for an Egyptian-Iranian agreement leader of a closed briefing given Wednesday by Israel Foreign Minister Hamad El-Sayed.
Israeli officials said yesterday that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat appeared to be retreating from his acceptance of a U.S. formula to break the negotiating deadlock, and they confirmed that Dayan saw an erosion in Egypt's bargaining position. Mr. Sadat will begin. Will leave for the United States March 12 to seek a way out of the impasse.
Webster assumes FBI leadership
WASHINGTON-William H. Webster, a federal judge for the last seven years, took over direction of the FBI yesterday with a promise to change the administration's approach.
Webster, chosen by President Jimmy Carter for the job, has committed himself to a 10-year term that would extend beyond Carter's tenure in office, even if the president is re-elected in 1980. His selection as FBI chief ended a year-long search by the Carter administration. He replaces M.C. Kelley,
Locally ...
Students seeking a more exotic holiday have the opportunity to "work their way" through Britain in an exchange program that has been set up between the United States and that country. The program allows American university students to obtain a special six-month work permit, called Blue Card, that gives them a better chance of finding employment on the British job market. See story page 11.
Crowding of prisons considered in honor camp bill
By CAROL HUNTER
Staff Writer
Three proposed honor camps would reduce prison crowding and provide a freer environment for prisoners close to parole, the Department of Corrections officials said.
State legislators said they agreed that the state needed a place for the rising prison rate and that it would build a bill that would create three honor camps near state reservoirs. If the bill passes, 55 prisoners would live at a camp on state land, 10 percent of them in the reservoir, four miles southwest of Lawrence.
The question facing legislators is whether honor camps, additional higher security prisons or renovation of existing buildings is the answer.
An even more complex question is why prison populations are rising in the first place—a question that corrections department officials find hard to answer.
THE STATE'S average daily prison population followed a downward trend until 1974 when the population was about 1,400. In 1977, the population had climbed to 2,088.
But officials also said the state was tougher on criminals than before. Fewer people are placed on probation or paroled as soon, they said, and new state laws require minimum sentences, instead of allowing probation.
Directors of the state's six prisons note that Kansas' population has risen and that a higher percentage of the population is committing crimes.
See related stories pages nine and 10.
"I think some of these are cases where they've been tried on probation several times," he said.
on them," Robert Hannigan, director of the Toronto Honor Carm. said.
"I THINK at that time they were putting a lot of people on probation and parole," he said. "My own opinion is that it's finally caught up with us. There's a certain part of the population that's going to commit people who will eventually end up behind bars."
Gary Rayo, director of the Kansas State Industrial Reformatory, Hutchinson.
"We recently reviewed the number of people being paroled, and at this point in time there is no appreciable difference from a year ago, certainly no reduction," he said.
The theory that fewer people are being paroled was refuted by Les Tolan, deputy counsel for the Justice Department.
But if the same number of prisoners are being paroled, more new prisoners must be entering the system. The population at Hutchinson, which was 514 in 1974, rose to 809 by 1977. Planners predict a rise to 900 in 1979. Ravow the prison capacity is 923.
THE KANSAS State Penitentiary, Lansing, has experienced a similar population rise. In July 1975 the prison had 668 inmates, and the number has 790 inmates and only 50 vacacapses.
K. Oller, prison director at Lansing,
and tough state law as a reason for the prisons' closure.
THE INCREASED population in all state prisons has been accompanied by an even larger increase in the percentage of young prisoners, George Thompson, director of the Kansas Reception and Diagnostic Center in Topeka, said.
said the number of women prisoners also was rising. There are 94 women at the prison now, she said, up from 70 three years ago.
Sally Halford, director of the Kansas Correctional Institute for Women, Lansing.
"Their big problem is involvement with drugs, including alcohol," he said. "We see more youths now with brain damage because of involvement with drugs."
The center gives all male felons a medical and psychiatric examination. Each prisoner is given an eye exam.
He said the young prisoners were as intelligent as or more intelligent than the rest in his group.
"We find that some are socially retarded," he said. "They can learn, but they haven't learned how to get along in society. They are not well-developed good work habits or school habits."
Hannigan said he thought prisoners could develop responsibility and good work habits
Each prisoner must go through maximum, then medium and finally
However, Walter Terrell, director of the Kansas Correctional Vocational Training Center, said he did not consider paroling as a punishment for a medium security prison as a disadvantage.
minimum security status before he is eligible for parole. Because of lack of space in the state's medium and minimum security prisons, many medium and minimum security status inmates are in maximum security prisons.
1. think that for some people it's an advantage to go through all the different levels, but I wouldn't say it's a disadvantage not to." he said.
The Vocational Training Center in Topeka is a minimum security prison for young men. It opened in January 1975. The center has a population of 155 and its capacity is
Hannigan also said recreational activities were benefits for prisoners in honor camps.
The monetary benefit from honor camps is small, he said. The prisoners are paid 60 cents a day for maintenance work at nearby reservoirs.
"Not everyone goes to an honor camp." Hannigan said, but "I think it would be better."
Rep. Pat Hurley, D-Leavenworth and chairman of the House Special Committee on Corrections, said he thought chances were good for funding at least one honor camp. Gov. Robert F. Bennett has recommended the Chicago Clockhouse Fund. However, the corrections department has included two honor camps in its budget.
The bill is now in the House Ways and Means Committee. The committee will hold hearings on the bill.