Tomorrow's weather
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
It will be a sunny day tomorrow.
Kansan
Online today
The Toaster Museum foundation home page. Visit this web page and see a Yugo converted into a toaster.
Tuesday
March 2, 1999
Section:
A
Vol. 109 · No. 105
Sports today
http://www.toaster.org
Next fall, Nick Collison will be a member of the Kansas men's basketball team. For now, he lives in fame in a small town in Iowa.
SEE PAGE 1B
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
This is a computer-generated photograph of the planned parking garage that is being constructed north of the Kansas Union. The new garage is expected to be completed by fall 2000. Contributed photo
(USPS 650-640)
More student parking on the way
$10 million parking garage to be completed in Fall 2000
Kearns and Glenn Prescott, chairman of the Parking Board, submitted next year's
By Kristi Reimer Kansan staff writer
A new parking garage north of the Kansas Union will free about 400 metered spaces for student parking in nearby lots, said Don Kearns, director of parking services.
Most of the 300 spaces in the garage not reserved for visitors also will be student parking, although specific allocations among students, faculty and staff have not been finalized.
parking budget to University Council last week and reported on this year's projects, including the new garage.
The garage will contain 815 spaces, 500 of which must be paid for at hourly visitor rates to generate revenue for a $1 million yearly bond payment, according to the report.
"That's been the plan from the beginning." Kearns said.
The garage will absorb most visitor parking from that area of campus. Kearns said he would remove the meters from Memorial Stadium iots, Mississippi Street and Jayhawk Boulevard, which would open about 400 spots for students plus additional spaces in the garage.
Parking would be eliminated in some congested areas, such as in front of the Union.
"I want to open up that street," Kearns said. "It will be a lot safer."
Kearns said that if visitors weren't using the garage, those spaces would be open to students, faculty and staff. But he said he thought that was unlikely because of the garage's proximity to museums and the Union.
Holly Krebs, holdover senator, said the report was more positive and student-friendly than student senators were expecting. Krebs said she was glad to hear about the additional spaces in the parking lots.
Regulations exclude some KU students from donating
See GARAGE on page 3A
Blood drive organizers unsure about how many are rejected
By Clay McCuintish Special to the Kansan
The University of Kansas Athletic Corporation blood drive last week and the American Red Cross blood drive this week have brought the rule into focus.
A Food and Drug Administration regulation that has been in place for more than 10 years is preventing gay men from donating blood.
The FDA requires all blood donors to answer 49 questions about their health and behavior before they donate. If potential donors answer "yes" to any of the questions, they are turned away.
Raven Heavy Runner, Browning, Mont,
senior, disagrees with the regulation.
"They're cutting down on those who would donate blood, who are gay males, and who are HIV-negative." Heavy Runner said. "It snacks of homophobia."
The question at issue asks, "Male Donors: Have you had sex with another man, even one time, since 1977?" The question for females asks if they have had sex with a male who has had sex with a male since 1977.
"At the time it didn't bother me, because they didn't know that much about [AIDS]," Heavy Runner said. "Now you would think they would have brought their regulations up to par."
Heavy Runner tried to donate blood in 1985, when he was 21 years old. He was deferred because of the regulation.
Cindy Schmiederel, Kansas Blood Services employee and organizer of the KUAC blood drive, said it was better to err on the side of safety than risk taking infected blood.
"If my son received blood, I would want prescreening and testing in place," Schmiedeler said.
On Feb.24, the KUAC drive attracted 69 possible donors by 2 p.m. Fourteen failed to meet the 49 health criteria. Schmeidler said she didn't know how many of the 14 had failed because of the sexual activity restrictions.
"It's frustrating to me." Schmiedeler said. "I'm judged solely on the number of units collected. Strict deferral criteria mean fewer donors."
Debbie Wadhams, a medical technologist in Overland Park, agreed that safety was paramount.
"It's worth keeping the regulations," Wadhams said. "It doesn't make it fair to the patients to relax current standards and put patients at risk."
Wadhams has worked in medical safety and testing for 24 years. From 1981 to 1988, she supervised and tested blood banks at various hospitals.
She said she remembered when AIDS first appeared.
"As healthcare workers, we're in the business of trying to save people. When the blood we give patients gives them a fatal disease, it's totally opposite what we're trying to do." Wadhams said.
Although donated blood is now tested for HIV and other diseases, the tests aren't perfect.
"Different diseases have different stages," Wadhams said. "Depending on the stage of the disease, a person could have a disease, and it not show up in tests."
Wadhams said the guideline should stay despite the fact that gay men aren't contracting the disease at the fastest-growing rate.
"The gay male population is still and always has been the group with the highest percentage risk of the disease," she said.
The KU chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had no comment on the issue, said president Buddy Lloyd.
"I support any effort to eliminate unfair policies or practices based on sexual orientation," Robinson said. "I also applaud the efforts of students who are involved in organizing this blood drive, and I'm going to donate a pint."
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, homosexual men are at higher risk for HIV because of the internal sexual contact they receive, if unprotected.
"Maybe we should look into it," he said. Queers and Allies director Christine Robinson said she thought the regulation should be examined and possibly altered.
A change for the worse?
Walter Smith, Warrenton, Mo., junior, uses the change machine in the third floor Ellsworth Hall lobby. Coca-Cola inherited the machines last fall and is leasing them to Treat America. Photo by Gus Koffler KANSAN
Change machines may get the boot
By Nadia Mustafa
Kansan staff writer
Residents at Stouffer Place Apartments — many of whom are non-traditional or international students whose spouses aren't students — are upset that a change machine was removed from their laundry room last September.
Ann Curry, Student Housing Advisory Board representative and Stouffer Place resident, said that Stouffer residents relied on the change machine. She said that the machine was not replaced after it broke last fall.
"Many women residents have little kids, and they do not have drivers licenses," said Curry, Lawrence graduate student. "It's inaccessible for them to go and get change. We also have a large majority of international student families, and women are not allowed to make financial transactions in some orthodox religions. It was culturally insensitive for housing to pull the coin machine."
Curry said that the 300 Stouffer Place residents should not be forced to use KUIDs to pay for laundry because of their ethnic diversity and unique circumstances.
"I embarrassed because this is a blotch on the University's face," she said. "We should not have to beg for this. They're manipulating us as consumers."
Curry said that a resident vandalized the KUID machine in January at the
laundry room out of frustration from the lack of a change machine.
When the University implemented the new KUID last spring, Coca-Cola inherited the change machines and sub-leased them to Treat America, a Lenexa company that provides KU with non-beverage vending services and all of the change machines.
Jack Mitchell, president of Treat America, said that the change machine at Stouffer Place was used almost exclusively for laundry instead of snacks, which was not beneficial for business.
"The machine broke, and we did not put a new one in," he said. "We did not
See STUDENTS on page 6A
Beginning of Women's History Month marked with pins on Wescoe Beach
Allison McCallie,
Denver freshman,
pins a violet ribbon
on Brian Biehl,
Tulsa sophomore.
McCallie picked up
the ribbon at the
ribbon pinning
table which was
set up yesterday in
front of Wacoe as
part of Women's
History Month.
Photo by Gus
Koffler / KANSAN
By Dan Curry
Kansan staff writer
With violet ribbons pinned on their shirts, KU students wrote down on purple slips of paper yesterday the names of women they cared about.
To kickoff Women's History Month, women on campus conducted the Ribbon Project, which will continue from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. today in front of Wescoe Hall.
The purple slips of paper will be sturng together to form fringes that will be displayed at the Kansas Union for the rest of March.
One mother, after learning her daughter had written her name on a ribbon, was momentarily speechless.
"I'm overwhelmed," Linda Abell said, "I'm just really overwhelmed. That's really special for me."
Kristen Abell, Overland Park senior and one of the organizers of the Ribbon Project, said that she had selected her mother because of how she had persevered through difficulties in her life.
"What we want to do is have people recognize women, or men, and the impact they've had in their own lives," she said. "It's easy to put up posters everywhere of people you don't know, but it's important to recognize
Women's History Month is an important time to recognize the value of women in our culture right now, said Kathy Rose-Mockry, director of the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center.
The Ribbon Project was sponsored by the Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center, the Black Law Student Association, the Department of Student Housing, the Panhellenic Association, the Multicultural Resource Center and Women in Law.
extraordinary women in our everyday lives."
Hundreds of names had already been written down, Kristen Abell said.
"When you have history in the title, some people tend to think of past events, but history is an ongoing process," she said. "One of the things that is really important is to look not only at past events, but to look at where we are now and where we are going."
International Working Women's Day, March 9. will be one opportunity to focus on the contemporary position of women.
The day is dedicated to increasing awareness of the working conditions of women throughout the world, which are still unsafe in many instances, Rose-Mockry said.