University Daily Kansan, July 10, 1980
Page 3
LMH to replace protesting staff
Bv VANCE HINER
Staff Reporter
Replacements are being sought for 12 Lawrence Memorial Hospital employees who resigned last week, complaining that administrators transferred a part-time switchboard operator for no reason.
Robert Ohlen, LMH executive director, said Tuesday the hospital's decision to reassign the switchboard operator came after a complaint by a Lawrence physician about the operator's handling of a phone call.
"Actually, the decision to transfer this employee originated four months ago. Ohl said. "The complaint by the policeman prompted the final decision."
The resigning admissions and switchboard employees said last week they objected to the administration's decision because it was made without a complete investigation of the facts and instances surrounding the complaint.
"It was because of the treatment that I felt the employee received," Louisa Carr, night admissions and switchboard operator, said of her decision to resign. "The administration didn't want us to share her side of the problem."
Carr said she did not know whether she would go back to work at the hospital.
"It's possible, if things are changed," she said. "But I really haven't given the subject much thought. I don't regret my decision at all."
According to Ohlen, a letter was sent to the employees by the hospital last week informing them that the receptionist would only be accepted through yesterday.
"We haven't received any retractions and we'll begin filling the positions by reverse seniority," he said.
Bob Campbell, LMH director of community relations, said no employees had been fired or suspended
Cobb ...
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society are also subjects he said had special importance.
"A public university has a kind of unique function as a conservation society," he said. "It's hard to do that with things simultaneous. There is a kind of time difference."
"The public naturally has expectations about the University, expectations which sometimes change. The University has to be very careful about deciding which changes expected of it can and should be responded to.
"We have a kind of prophetic responsibility—to be able to be of service 20 years from now by holding on to the things of that thing that be held on to"
since the transfer of the switchboard operator.
"We're just proceeding with normal personnel processing," he said. "The employees who resigned were always to return before the deadline."
Hospital administration officials denied that any employee had been treated unfairly.
"We didn't fire this employee." Ohlen
said. "We merely requested that she work at her admissions clerk position, which she always handled well, instead of at the switchboard.
"It was a matter of rescheduling."
It was a matter of calculating Campbell said it was strange that 12 employees would resign over the transfer of a co-worker.
"I understand how it might look odd," he said. "But I can't explain it either."
Nuclear dump growing
By LESLIE SPANGLER Staff Reporter
The KU nuclear waste disposal area is being expanded because the present area is full.
The nuclear dump is located on the grounds of the Sunflower Army Armament Plant, 13 miles east of Lawrence.
The current site is a fenced area, approximately 70 by 800 feet. It has served as the University's disposal building and Reactor Center was built 20 years ago.
An adjacent strip of land, 70 by 150 feet, is now being fenced to handle the burial of nuclear waste. The last waste disposal was in January.
Bren Frieden, radiation safety officer at the Nuclear Reactor Center, said yesterday they were storing the waste until the new area was fenced.
Any materials used in experiments involving radioactivity are disposed at the dump. The materials include vials,
bottles, metal and glass containers. rubber gloves and laboratory animals.
The materials are put in boxes and buried in eight-foot-deep trenches. This allows for the required minimum of water depth to be laid of the material and a layer of dirt below.
KU officials have been looking into alternative disposal sites that may be necessary in two or three years when the new area fits up.
"Our main concern," Friesen said, "is finding an alternative means of disposing of toluene."
Toluene is used in some experiments at KU. It is a toxic material, but not radioactive. When used in experiments it can be used as a solvent, it is disposed of at the Sunflower Plug.
Burning toluene is considered the only safe way to dispose of the substance but by burning it, Friesen said, any radioactivity from the experiments would be burned at the same time, releasing radioactive waste into the air.
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