University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
The University Daily
KANSAN
Vol. 90, No. 146
Monday, June 16, 1980
Sen. Nancy Kassebaum passes during a speech last night before nearly 500 high-school girls who are attending the 38th annual Sunflower Girls State. During her speech in Templin Hall, Kassebaum told the audience that optimism was the way to meet the challenges of the future. "It is easy to be pessimistic," she said. "But pessimism is the easy way out."
Dog meat on the table legal but probably in poor taste
Staff Reporter
By PAUL CARMAN
SALINA—Eating a dog may not be common, but it is not illegal. Salinans discovered recently after a reported case of dog-eating stirred emotions in the community.
It began several weeks ago when the local newspaper began receiving requests that it publish warnings to the public to keep their dogs inside their yards or locked in their houses.
At first the paper ignored the calls and letters, according to Larry Mathews, managing editor of the newspaper.
"All the calls and letters were anonymous and could easily have come from one person," he said. "We ignored the whole thing until the Board of Health got involved."
"It was finally determined that one family ate a dog, and all the others to it. It dog, and they had it," the lawyer said. "They have it."
THE BOARD OF HEALTH in Salina informed the paper and the complaint that no violation had been made.
Dick Hack, the director of Environmental Health Department, conducted a Louisiana County Health Department, conduct
"As far as I know, if you want to go out in your yard and shoot your neighbor's dog and eat it for supper, there's no law that says you can't—if you settle with him for the loss of his" Hark said.
There is no Salina city ordinance against dog eating, according to Mathews.
Hack said, "So long as it's not sold in the grocery store, the government doesn't regulate it. The government doesn't control what people kill and eat themselves."
MATHEWS ALSO said there was nothing inhumane about the incident.
"The family went out to the city pound and bought a dog that would have been killed by the city any way," he said. "The didn't torture it. The dog did the dog just like you would a cow or a nut."
Linda Decelles, manager of the Charles Ies Memorial Shelter in Lawrence it would be more difficult for someone to buy a dog for slaughter in Douglas County.
"Someone can't walk in and buy a pet from
us," she said. "We screen all applicants to make sure they would provide a good home."
DECELLEES HAD NOT heard of any cases of dog eating in this part of the state, but said, "If it were done, the Humane Society would not have a very good opinion about it at all."
When asked about the Humane Society's position on an owner killing a dog, she said, "Outside the city limits, there is no law which prohibits one from shooting one's own animals if they are sick or no longer wanted. If it was cruelly abused, of course, then we prosecute."
FOOD PREFERENCES are purely cultural variations according to Carl Leban, associate professor of East Asian Studies, who teaches a course in food in Chinese culture.
"There are, for instance, some people who would not eat frog legs, snakes, octopuses or snails. There are some people who simply will not eat meat," he said.
"Animals domesticated for food since early times included dog," Leban said, "As early as two millennium B.C., dog was included on menus of great Chinese cooks."
One of an estimated 2,000 motorcycle riders leaves Quenoque Saturday afternoon after the Friday the 13th celebration. Osage County police are seeking a suspect in the shooting death of a 27-year-old Pomona man.
Quenemo wants bash busted
By DAViD STIPP
Staff Reporter
QUENEMO--"They'd better stay away"
Quenemo's postmaster, Dorothy Brigain, warned
Saturday morning with grim determination as
she surveyed the piles of broken glass and
smashed beer cans that littered the town's two
main streets.
Brigan spoke for most of Quenemo's 430 students when she pronounced the word, "prevent" the threat, right above "power."
motorcycleists from ever using her town again for
Friday the 18th celebrations.
"May be this will draw enough attention to the thing so we can put a stop to it," she said.
THE NEAR RIOT Friday night in Queeno which ended in three deaths, was the culmination of a series of bikers' gatherings that began six years ago when a local tailed offered 25-cent beers on Friday the 13th. Since then, Queeno, a farming community about 35 miles southeast of Topeka, has played host to crowds of motorcycle enthusiasts who gather for beer
drinking and drag racing on Quenemo's main streets every day the 13th.
Friday's celebration was the first in the tradition to end tragically.
More than 2,000 bikers and 3,500 onlookers began converging on Quenemo early Friday morning. About 80 police officers from five surrounding counties were called in to Quenemo to help keep the peace, according to Osage County officials.
Except for noise and minor vandalism, it was
casual (UNFEM) back home.
Trash littered the streets of Quenemo Saturday after a turbulent ending to a Friday the 13th celebration that attracted thousands. In the center of a dirt street a 27-year-old man was shot in the chest and killed. The ill-fated party drew critical remarks from Quenemo residents and attracted national attention.
western Kansas water supply almost drained
By WALTER THORP Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
When western Kansas farmers began to pump water from the ground around 1900, they thought it was too hot. They started to use salt.
What they had tapped was a huge underground ocean geologists call the Orallala.
Water from the Ogallala spawned an
A giant waterbearing formation of rocks, sand and gravel created thousands of years ago, the Ogallala aquifer spans the high plains from Texas to the Dakotas.
But the Ogallala is drying up and there is little that can be done about it. If the Kansas Geological Survey forecast is correct the aquifer will be too dry to draw from in eight years.
agribusiness industry that annually contributes $7 billion to the Kansas economy. State economists attribute an estimated $3 billion to irrigation.
"It's a huge system and a huge source of water," Bill Hambleton, director of the Kansas Geological Survey, said. "But it has been taken away from us for decades that we are actually mining the water."
"Over years, the decline in the water level has been on the average of, say, three feet a year and the recharge rate has been about three inches. It looks like a mathematician to figure out what happens."
In other words, they are drawing it out if a faster rate than it is being recharged.
IN PARTS OF southwest Kansas 150-foot drops in the ground water level have been recorded over the past decade, according to the Kansas Water Resources Research Institute.
A Governor's Task Force on Water Resources, concerned about the economic and environmental consequences of a widespread water shortage, investigate the problem for two
At the heart of the problem was the belief among farmers that the aquifer was replenished by melting Rocky Mountain snow and thus inexhaustible.
The task force also found farmers reluctant to change from a water-intensive crop such as corn to less profitable dryland wheat farming, or to increase the amount of water they could pump from the ground.
HOW DOES THIS affect the rest of Kansas?
Miller said that when the water was no longer economical to pump, the people in the eastern part of the state will have to pick up the tax on the costs by failing businesses and farms in the west.
Employment will also suffer, he said.
One industry that would be hardest hit by a loss of water would be the Kansas livestock industry, Hambleton said. Farmers could revert to dryland wheat and farming at a financial loss, but if there was not enough water to supply the crop, that industry would be financially destroyed.
Lawrence police want formal contract
Bv MARK PITTMAN
Staff Reporter
A fundamental rift in the talks between police and the City of Lawrence threatens to keep the two sides from coming to an amicable agreement.
The Lawrence Police Officers Association wants a comprehensive work agreement that will detail in writing the exact rights and responsibilities of an officer.
Kevin Burt, director of personnel relations for the city, said Lawrence had a "special relationship" with its municipal employees, including the police, and did not want to spoil it.
The city is not willing to give it.
"It's like if I walked home to my wife and gave this contract which said all the things that we
understand between each other are now going to be in writing," he said. "That is going to hurt the
"We're quite willing to sit down and talk about their specific areas of concern, but this formalizing of the situation, well, I'm not going to reduce everything to written."
GARY SAMPSON, chairman of the LPOA,
maintains that any agreements made in
this chapter would come to us quickly.
"Put it down in writing," he said. "That way I've got something to show my membership and we don't have to start over if they want to take something away from us."
The firefighters association, which has a similar relationship with the city, recently released a report showing that 85% of
negotiation ended with mutual praise for good-faith bargaining.
In contrast, the police negotiations have been characterized by shouting matches across the city.
A FEDERAL MEDIATOR will attempt to resolve the dispute in seven days starting next Monday. If he cannot, the differences will be taken to the City Commission.
"It's just that we so much better off with the association," Samson said. "It was like one guy talking into the wind before. He's not going to make much noise. If there's a whole bunch of guys talking into the wind, well, they're going to make a lot more racket.
The LPOA has had to "jump up and down" to
see UNION back page
Weather
Skies will remain partly cloudy today, with much cooler temperatures. Highs will reach 78. Tonight will be clear and cool, but it may still be sunny. Clouds will be from the northeast at 10-20 mph.
CLOUDY
Tomorrow will be sunny and mild, with temperatures barely topping 80. Wednesday's skies will be mostly sunny, with highs in the low to mid 80s.
The extended forecast calls for temperatures to climb well into the 90s by Fri.