Friday, April 23, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 3
Senate collaborates on citywide issues
By Ezra Sykes
esykes@kanson.com
Kansan staff writer
By Ezra Sykes
Last fall, Kevin Yoder, student body president, asked the Lawrence City Commission to create a non-voting position for the Student Senate similar to the positions created for the two Lawrence high schools.
The proposal was voted down by the commission 3-2. Dissenting commissioners argued that if Senate wanted a commission member they could easily vote one in and that by giving the Senate a position, they would be giving it an unfair voice that other community groups did not have.
But that doesn't mean Senate does not have a voice in the community.
Tom Moore, campus director for the Student Legislative Awareness Board, has been working for about the past seven months on bringing Senate and the city of Lawrence closer together.
And for the most part, it seems to be working.
"In my dealings with the commission, there hasn't been anyone who doesn't want to listen to students," said Moore, whose job includes presenting the commission with student input.
organizations have collaborated on include citywide public transportation, an alcohol task force, bike paths and funding for Saferie.
Moore recently worked with city management to pass a resolution that would make the intersection at 15th and Engel streets — now a considerably dangerous area for pedestrians
a safer crossing.
Some of the recent issues that the two
He also is in the process of sorting through the complicated citywide public transportation issue.
In the last camp elections, KU students voted 3.714 to 340 in
favor of cooperation between the city and the University to construct a citywide public transportation system.
But despite the overwhelming student support, student fees are not to be used for anyone but students, said Nicole Skalla, transportation coordinator.
Skalla said that Senate would first have to convince KU administration to change the status of student fees.
John Nalbandian has served on the commission for the past eight years and has been involved in several projects in coordination with Senate. As for the bus issue, he said it has yet to really develop.
"In the past there have been conversations but there has never seemed to be student interest in merging monetarily," he said. "Now, they think there will be. Those are sobering times when we start to talk about the money involved."
Moore knows the process will be a long one.
"We all agree on the problem, we just don't know what to do to solve it," he said.
Nalbandian said he thought that communication between the commission and the students was important.
"It's good for us to get together, talking more about matters and identifying issues that are important to both groups," Nalbandian said. "I think our biggest accomplishment is raising awareness about the specific issues that affect students."
Nalbandian said that Lawrence being a college town definitely played a role in the decisions of the city commission. The fact that most students don't own property affects the sales tax, he said.
"Students have such a big impact; in the restaurants, the entertainment and the vitality of this city," he said.
Mike Wildgen, city manager, said he
thought Senate had become more active at the city level in recent years.
"The idea of working directly with them is kind of foreign but they definitely have given their opinions to us," he said.
Wildgen said he considered the student body to be just like any other group in the city, only bigger.
But Yoder, who proposed a seat on the commission for students thought that politically, being a student was unique.
"There is a large constituency of students in Lawrence who pay taxes, and I think Student Senate is the best way to get their opinions across," he said.
"We're only here for four years or so, and then we leave," he said. "That makes it hard to build a base for the issues."
Yoder also said that the commission should spend time seeing what KU students want and that the commission and Senate were so important to each other that they must work more closely.
trunks they nave.
"Students have definitely gained influence in the city and, I think they will continue to do so in the future," he said.
And during the past year, Yoder thinks they have.
Edited by Matt Merkel-Hess
Rain delays, but doesn't stop, University plans
By T. L. Johnson
By T.J. Johnson
tjohnson@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Heavy thunderstorms drenched Lawrence and the University of Kansas yesterday afternoon, moving Earth Day celebrations inside and flooding streets and buildings.
The storms dropped a total of 2.93 inches of rain on campus, according to the KU Weather Service in Malot Hall, causing problems on campus and in Lawrence.
"We've had reported flooding in the streets pretty much all over campus," said Mike Richardson, director of Facilities Operations.
"It just came so fast that our systems just aren't designed for it." Richardson said.
He said that buildings on campus typically experienced flooding during heavy rains, including Watson Library and Stauffer-Flint Hall.
Sgt. George T. Wheeler of the Lawrence Police Department said that reports of street flooding in town were fairly widespread yesterday, with the worst flooding in the area of 11th Street and Haskell Avenue, which was closed for part of the afternoon, and 23rd Street between Nalsmith Drive and Oudahl Road. He said that the flood waters were deep enough to stall some cars but that no serious situations had occurred.
"We had some calls from people driving in high water — motorist assists — but no one sitting on the roof of their car," Wheeler said.
He said that lightning or high water had also knocked out the traffic lights at West Sixth and Michigan streets, causing traffic problems.
The Kansas Highway Patrol closed a section of U.S. Highway 24 north of Lawrence for one hour.
Lightning that accompanied the storm caused sporadic power outages in Lawrence, according to Mark Schreiber, Manager of Community Relations for Kansas Power and Light.
"We had some small, isolated outages but no major problems." Schreiber said.
Bill Pesek, Manager of Operations for Computing Services, said that the uninterruptible power supply that feeds the computer operations command center had prevented any disruptions of campus computer services but that computer labs may have experienced temporary outages.
"We did have a little blip, so to speak, on the PCs, but we didn't receive any calls from customers on service disruptions," Pesek said.
The weather did disrupt or at least displace the "Toons at Noon" event at the Kansas Union today, part of Student Union Activities and the Kansas Union's Earth Day celebration.
Part of the musical event was scheduled to be held outside the Union but was forced inside by the weather.
Stephanie Sapienza, public relations coordinator for SUA, said that the rain had not affected turnout for the event.
"I think people were crowding into the Union between classes because of the rain, so it didn't hurt the turnout," Sapienza said.
Not all students disliked the storms yesterday. Josh Jordan, Emporia junior, said his walk to class in the rain was cold and wet but not miserable.
"I enjoyed it," he said. "I had my headphones on, and I was listening to the Dave Matthews Band and walking in the rain."
The National Weather Service said that there was a 30 percent chance for additional rain in the Lawrence area today.
Edited by Jodi Smith
Connor Noonan, Denver freshman, and Corbett Mermis, Houston freshman, slosh through the flooded stairway leading down to the Dole Human Development Center. The KU campus received 2.93 inches of rain yesterday.
Photo by Christina Neff/KANSAN
Police say increased awareness lowers KU crime statistics
By Katie Burford
kbourford@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Crime is down at the University of Kansas and numbers released yesterday by the KU Public Safety Office prove it. Bulletines are down 29 percent
Burglaries are down 25 percent
Theft is down 12 percent
The total number of criminal offenses is down to 1,206 from 1,438, or 16 percent.
this to several factors, including a better-informed public.
Lt. Schuyler Bailey of the KU Public Safety Office attributed this to several fa-
"The big decreases are in burglary and theft," he said. "People are aware of their property — they are not leaving property unattended, they are registering their bicycles and not leaving possessions visible in their cars."
Another contributing factor was KU Parking Department's change from hang tags to stickers, because many thefts last year were from stolen hang-tag parking permits, Bailey said.
Despite the decrease, Sgt. Troy Malen of the KU
Crimes 1996 1997 1998
Murder 0 0 0
Sexual battery 4 0 2
Rape 3 7 1
Robbery 0 0 1
Aggravated assault 4 13 4
Burglary 266 348 284
Motor vehicle theft 4 9 3
Arson 4 2 3
Drug, weapon,
and alcohol arrests
Drug violations 28 38 17
Weapon violations 0 5 1
Alcohol violations 10 2 15
Hate & Bias Crime
Totals 6 3 3
Other areas of
interest
Theft 617 595 525
Arrests for operating
a vehicle under the influence 91 120 113
Jason Williams/KANSAN
Public Safety Office said that it was important that the campus community stay vigilant and report any suspicious activity.
Bailey said that he wasn't sure if the decrease in drug violations was an actual reflection of a decrease in drug usage.
Similarly, he wasn't sure that the increase in alcohol violations meant students were drinking more.
"A lot of alcohol violations are officer-initiated," he said.
"And the awareness on the part of officers has increased."
The total number of hate crimes is unchanged from last year. Violent crime represents a small fraction of the crime reported on campus. Overall, violent crime rates have remained stable, with the biggest change being a decrease in the number of rape, which dropped from seven to one.
The Student-Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act requires the public safety office to report crime statistics every year. The act is also known as the "Clery Bill" in memory of Jeanne Clery, a student at Lehigh University in Bethelhem, Pa., who was brutally raped and murdered in her dorm room in April 1986.
Clery's parents lobbied for the legislation because they believed that their daughter's death could have been avoided if they had known about a rash of sexual assaults that occurred on Lehigh's campus during the three years prior to her murder.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton amended the act to require that all crimes motivated by hate or bias be included within the statistics.
The act also requires that the public safety office regularly make available information about crimes on campus. It decided that the most efficient way to go about this was to put the information on the Internet. Information about every crime reported on campus since Oct. 1, 1998 is available on the crime log at www.ukans.edu/~kucops.
"This department has been notifying the University community for more than twenty years of the types of crimes that occur on campus," Malen said. "The crime log is just another way to raise awareness."
Edited by Jodi Smith
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