Weekend weather
tomorrow: Partly cloudy with a high of 59 and a low of 36.
Sunday: Warmer with a high of 64 and a low of 40.
The University Daily Kansan
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Weekend Edition
Check out this Web site to see a humorous take on the 2000 Presidential Election.
Wandering the Web
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2000
www.comedycentral.com/
indecision2000
(USPS 650-640) • VOL. 110 NO. 104
WWW.KANSAN.COM
Alice relaxes among the various books at The Dusty Bookshelf, 708 Massachusetts St. Alice is one of many felines who reside in downtown businesses and make friends with business patrons.
Photo by Selena Jabara/ KANSAN
Commercial cats
Popularity of felines benefits local stores
By Jim O'Malley writer@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
Small, furry business partners are at work 24 hours a day, seven days a week in downtown Lawrence. They're the shop cats.
Shopkeepers say the cats are good for business, but because they're cats, they seem to consider themselves in charge.
"She's like the master of the store," said Sara Schwartz, St. Louis senior and sales associate."She lives here all the time.She's demanding all the time.She's always waiting in the morning expecting treats.
Sophie, a black-and-white short hair, is the boss at Natural Way Fine Gifts and Exotic Jewelry, 820 Massachusetts St.
"Sophie is a moody boss. There's days when she wants everybody to pet her, days when she snaps at everyone, and days when all she wants to do is sleep," she said.
But Sophie brings something to the business, too.
"The owners say it's kind of like
advertising." Schwartz said. "People come in to see Sophie."
One minor disadvantage to having a shop cat is that some customers are allergic to cats, but Schwartz said it was a bigger problem for her than for customers.
"I'm allergic, too," she said. "I don't pet her. She knows it so she likes to rub up against me."
Love Garden Sounds/Arts
Multiplex, 936/1-2 Massachusetts
St., has four live-in cats: Cayenne,
Lulu, Kandy and Jack. Jon
Harrison, Love Garden's "record
guy," said Jack and Cayenne had
been there eight or nine years,
several years longer than him.
"They've got seniority," he said. "And don't think they don't remind me."
Harrison said the cats were an asset to the store.
"Some people come in just to see the cats," she said. "We're attached to them even though they're not the nicest cats I've ever met. Cayenne is reasonably sweet, but the rest of them tend toward crankiness."
Short biographies of the cats posted in the store say that "Kandy has mellowed from a comically grouchy psych-kitty to a comically grouchy layabout."
Lulu's biography calls her a little bundle of fury who has gone quite mad. And although the sign says Cayenne is sweet and loving, it also says customers are not to pick her up.
But even so, customers seem to appreciate the cats, especially Jack, who is featured on the store's T-shirts and advertisements.
At Game Guy, 7 E. Seventh St., Kiki — a gray-striped American short hair — keeps owner Brian Harris company and brings people into the store. He started keeping Kiki there because when he adopted her, his apartment complex didn't allow pets. It has worked out well for Kiki. Harris said.
"She gets lots of attention, sleeps on the computer and goes in the back when she wants to be alone," he said.
Alice lives in The Dusty Bookshelf, 708 Massachusetts St. Sharon Heese, manager, said Alice was definitely an asset to the store. Alice adds a homey touch and fits in nicely with the window displays, she said.
The white man simply
Alice's duties aren't too heavy.
"She gets lots of love and lots of petting from customers," Heese said. "I think she's got it pretty good."
Trial draws professor away from classroom
Students say learning suffers from absence
By Doug Pacey
writer@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
The discrimination lawsuit against the University of Kansas is hurting one professor's performance in the classroom. students say.
Some students in the Print and Online Design class, taught by Mike Cuenca, assistant professor of journalism, say they are not learning this semester because he spends much of the class discussing the lawsuit brought by Cynthia Annett, former assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and her husband, Ray Pierotti, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Cuenca, who is Filipino American, learned last fall that he would not receive tenure and has brought a discrimination lawsuit of his own against the University. No trial date has been set.
However, Cuenca attends Annett and Plerotti's trial nearly every day in Kansas City, Kan., and has canceled two of the design class' six meetings, including today's class, sparking criticism from students and the chairman of the
news and information sequence in the school.
Many students did not feel comfortable giving their names because they feared grade retaliation but said their learning had suffered as a result.
"I learned more in a one- and-a-half hour workshop I took last semester than I have in five weeks in this class," one female student said.
Students said that Cuena spent at least the first 20 minutes of each class talking to them about Annett and Pierotti's lawsuit.
"It's like a divorce, and the kids are being dragged through the mud," said a male student in the class.
Cuenca denied that he spent 20 minutes of each class talking about the lawsuit and said his students were learning. But he said the students' learning had suffered because of his situation.
Still, of the 21 students in the design class, eight said that they had not learned anything and that Cuenca spent much of each class talking about the case. One said the class was learning, and another refused to answer questions. The remaining students could not be reached for comment or were Kansan staff members. Kansan policy is that staff members cannot be used as sources.
See PROFESSOR on page 6A
Statement from Ted Frederickson, professor of journalism and chairman of the news and information sequence:
"One part of my job as news chair is to make sure that students get the instruction they paid for. My private query to Professor Cuenca, which he has now made public by e-mailing it to 20 students and perhaps others, asks why he has missed four of the last six classes and how sending students to the trial of a discrimination lawsuit involving his friends instead of his classes teaches them anything about newspaper design.
Now that he has made my memo part of his public assertion that he has been discriminated against because he is Filipino American, I cannot let such an accusation go unanswered. Speaking as someone who is married to a Filipino American, received an award from the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] for battling racism, and participated fully in the hiring and evaluation of Professor Cuenca, I can say without doubt that his ethnicity had no role in the process whatsoever, with one exception: the fact he is a minority was viewed by the dean and faculty as a positive when he was hired.
Any suggestion that the current or former journalism dean, provost or members of the journalism faculty were motivated by racism is an unwarnished falsehood and an unwarranted attack on their characters that is not supported by a shred of evidence. Professor Cuenca and all of us on the journalism faculty are evaluated against high expectations of research and writing, collegial service and good classroom teaching, including the expectation that we show up to teach our classes.
Many of us on the faculty are concerned that such accusations, even though they are false, may have an adverse impact on the recruiting of minority faculty and students, which is a top priority for the School of Journalism."
EVENTS CALENDAR
Tonight:
Dr. Zhivegas, 9 p.m. at the Granada,
1020 Massachusetts St. St. $6, 21 and older. $7
18 to 20.
Band that Saved the World, 10 p.m. at The Jazzhaus, Massachusetts St. $4, 21 and older.
Ultimate Fakebook and Ashray Babyhead, 8 p.m at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. $4, 21 and older. $5, 18 to 20.
- Dru and the Geezers, 9 p.m. at Stu's Midtown Tavern, 925 Iowa St. $4, 21 and older.
Tomorrow:
The Nadas, 10 p.m. at the Jazzhaus,
926-1/2 Massachusetts St. $4, 21 and older.
Billy Ebeling and the Late For Dinner
Band, 9 p.m. at Stu's Midtown Tavern, 925
Iowa St. $4, 21 and older.
Cary Pierce, formerly of Jack o' Pierce,
and the Suga Daddies, 8 p.m. at The
Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. $7. 18
and older.
Sunday:
Saturday
Black Sheep and Das EFX, 9 p.m. at the Granada, 1020 Massachusetts St. $15 in advance, 18 and older.
Index
News .3A
Movies .5A
Nation news .7A
World news .8A
Feature .10A
Sports .1B
Horoscopes .2B
Poster .4-5B
Scoreboard .7B
The University Daily Kansas is the student newspaper of the University of Kansas. The first copy is paid through the student activity fee. Additional copies of the Kansas are 25 cents.
Reindeer Games, one of two movies this weekend featuring Ben Affleck,makes no lasting impression a Kansan reviewer says.
See page 10A
Run, Rudolph, run
Setting a bear trap
The Kansas men's basketball team has won three of its last four games and is poised to tear the Baylor Bears
apart.
See page 1B
Leading by example
Senior Ryan Vermeer, the 8th-ranked collegiate golfer in the nation, is ready to lead the Kansas golf team into the spring season.
...
See page 10B
Dennis Moore live
Dennis Moore visited campus last night in the Kansas Union. He led a singalong with students, and talked about the 2000 Presidential election.
See page 5A