Friday, January 21, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 3
Recent fires raise safety questions
By Jessie Meyer
By Jessie Meyer
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
How safe are you when you go to sleep at night?
Students at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., are questioning their own safety after a fire in a residence hall on Wednesday killed three students and injured 62 more.
At the University of Kansas, the nearly 5,000 residents of the seven residence halls, nine scholarship halls, Jayhawker Towers, Stouffer Place Apartments and the Sunflower Duplex Apartments may be questioning their own safety.
"We have invested heavily in early detection, immediate-evacuation programs," Ken Stoner, director of student housing, said "Fire or no fire, we get the students out."
However, he also said that only three of the existing 16 residence and scholarship halls had sprinkler systems. Lewis and Templin halls and
Amini Scholarship Hall are equipped with sprinkler systems, and Ellsworth Hall will have sprinklers once the renovation is complete.
"Sprinklers don't go off until the fire is hot enough to melt them," Stoner said. "The sprinklers put the fire out, but they don't evacuate the building."
Student safety is much more important than property issues, said Kim Grassmeyer, assistant director for student housing.
Phil Garito, associate director of housing maintenance, said: "All of our buildings, as far as residence halls go, have a hard wire combination of heat and smoke detectors."
Every residence hall room is equipped with a smoke detector, and there are heat detectors in the halls. He also said that the alarm system would not be triggered until two detectors had activated — in an effort to reduce the number of unintentional false alarms.
During the 1998-1999 academic year, there were a total of 63 false alarms,
"All of our buildings, as far as residence halls go, have a hard wire combination of heat and smoke detectors."
Phil Garito Associate director of housing maintenance
either intentional or unintentional, and five fires in all student housing combined. This fall, there were 28 false alarms and two fires, Grassmeyer said.
Tuesday, a fire in the trash chute at McColum Hall caused a total evacuation in the early morning hours, Grassmever said.
"The smoke alarm went off at 3:45 a.m." Grassmeyer said. "It caused quite a bit of smoke."
were instructed to evacuate the building, and staff members checked every room to make sure that all students were out safely, said Scott Strawn, complex director of Ellsworth and Hashinger halls.
Stoner said there always had been quick and successful evacuations.
Regan Jacobson, Wichita freshman and resident of McCollum Hall, said that she spent an hour and a half in the parking lot in her car while the firemen inspected the fire at McCollum. She said that she had evacuated several times this year for false alarms and thought, at first, that the fire on Tuesday was just another false alarm.
Generally, fire drills are not scheduled for the residence halls. In accordance with fire safety regulations, there need not be more than one total evacuation per semester. This evacuation, Stoner said, usually occurred during move-ins or because of a false alarm. He said the drills usually were not needed.
Skeletons are museum's pride and joy
Scientists excited about 'bargain' dinosaur exhibit
Above: Tim Parker, Independence, Mo., senior, scrapes some dirt from the femur of a camarasaur skeleton named Annabelle. After years of collecting mineral deposits, this particular femur still weighs about 500 lbs., Parker said. Below: Anthony Maltese, Lawrence senior, explains the bone fragmentation on the skull of a camarasaur. Maltese has been working on a camarasaur named Annabelle that was dug up in 1997 and 1998. An exhibit of Annabelle should be ready by May. Photos by Nick Krug/KANSAN
By Jim O'Malley
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Dinosaurs are big business.
Difosars are big business!
A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is for sale on Millionaire.com for a minimum price of $5.8 million. And that scares Larry Martin, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior curator at the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History.
It's scary because the museum owns a family group of camaraurs — an adult male, an adult female and a child. And Martin doesn't even want to think about how much they would be worth on the open market.
Camarasaurs are sauropods long-necked, long-tailed herbivores that lived in the late Jurassic period 140 million years ago.
But if the museum is lucky, it could find something even bigger. Already, two big fossilized brachiosaur feet are lying on a table in the museum's basement, and the museum is sending a crew to Wyoming this summer to look for the rest of the skeleton.
They're big. The bigger adult is about 70 feet long, Martin said, but a lot of it is neck and tail. It will be about 14 feet tall at the shoulders when it is fully assembled. The smaller adult is still big — it's 50 feet long and 12 feet high.
"If we find the rest of it, it would be the biggest dinosaur ever found," Martin said.
Meanwhile, museum staff has named the camaraasaurus Annabelle, Lyle and Nick-Mick. The museum bought the dinosaurs by private agreement with the landowners, Martin said. He said it cost much less than buying them on the open market and that much of the cost was paid by a state tourism grant.
"The University is getting one of the great bargains of the
new millennium." Martin said.
Annabelle is one of the best-preserved sauropod dinosaur skeletons ever found, Martin said, so the museum staff is preparing her for exhibition in Dyche Hall. She will be on the fifth floor with Comanche, the horse who survived Custer's Last Stand.
Tom Swearingen, director of exhibits, said the exhibit should be ready by May.
It will be a tight fit. Swearingen said there would be only a few inches between Annabelle's head and the ceiling, even though she would be kneeling.
"Annabelle's going to look like she's in a can no matter where we put her," Martin said. So there won't be room for Lyle, let alone a giant brachiosaurus.
Leonard Krishtalka, director of the museum, said the museum was trying to raise money to build a dinosaur hall large enough for the whole family of
More information For a slideshow of photos of the camerasaur fossils, go to www.kansan.com.
camarasaus. The hall could be an addition to Dyche Hall or a new building on West Campus, he said.
But even if the hall is never built, the museum would never sell its dinosaurs, he said, because the museum is in the business of preserving and documenting life forms of the past.
Swearingen said an exhibit of the whole group would rival the exhibits at the Chicago's Field Museum and the Denver Museum of Natural History.
"With a little work, we could beat them," Martin said.
"We've got something unique here," Martin said. "We have a whole family group."
Tim Parker, Independence, Mo., senior, is doing some of that work. He worked on the crew that dug Annabelle up in 1997 and 1998 and is helping prepare Annabelle for exhibition. Parker also a professional dinosaur dealer. He and his father are in business buying and selling fossils, he said.
A group of Orthodox Jews walk by the Wailing Wall on their way to a bar mitzvah. This photograph was taken by a KU student who traveled to Israel during winter break. Contributed photo
Jewish students explore heritage on trip to Israel
By Ryan Blethen
writer@kansan.com
Konsoon staff writer
Watching the sun rise over the Dead Sea from the ancient fortress of Massada, Eve Katz realized that what her ancestors did was necessary.
At Massada, a group of Jews called the Zealots battled the Romans. When they realized they no longer could fight the Romans, they committed suicide to keep themselves from becoming Roman slaves.
Katz, Birmingham, Ala., sophomore, said if her ancestors had given in to the Romans, Jews still could be slaves today.
During winter break, Katz and 18 other University of Kansas students traveled to Israel. The Israel 2000 trip was put together by the Hillel and Birthright Israel foundations and was organized for young Jews who never had been to Israel.
The group left January 3 and returned January 14. They were joined by 6,000 other Jewish students from around the world, 3,000 of which were from the United States.
The tour group traveled through Israel, visiting historic sites such as the Golan Heights and Jerusalem.
For most, the trip was not just a religious journey, but a cultural awakening.
Jacob Eastman, Mission junior, said what the trip taught him more than anything else was that while Americans viewed Judaism as a religion, in Israel, Judaism was a culture.
Adam Harris, Wheaton, Ill., senior, agreed. He said the trip did not make him more religious but that it had made him more culturally involved.
"It was empowering for me." Harris said.
Harris said he enjoyed the trip so much he planned on spending three weeks in Israel this summer after he graduated in May.
Susan Shafer-Landau, executive director of the KU Hillet Foundation, also went on the trip. She said she liked the trip because the tour guides told the story of Israel. Shafer-Landau had been to Israel once before, she said, but she was backpacking and did not get the true history of the country.
Seventy-one University students applied for 20 spots. Shafer-Landau wanted a diverse group, so with the help of a local committee, she created what she called a modified lottery. They whittled down the field of 71 with criteria such as gender and year in school. They also interviewed the applicants to make sure they were Jewish and had never been to Israel before. One student had to drop out at the last minute, making the total 19.
Emily Chaskelson, Overland Park senior, said the trip was wonderful because there was not a great deal of Jewish culture in Kansas. One problem with the trip, she said, was that it was over-organized, and she said she did not have enough free time explore on her own.
Shaer-Landau said the trip was important for Jewish students who never had been to Israel before, because it allowed them to connect with their community. She said going to Israel for the first time was an eye opener to some students because, in America, they do not always feel like a minority. But after being in a nation where nearly everybody is Jewish, it can be hard coming back to America and realizing they are a minority.
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