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The University Daily Kansan is the student newspaper of the University of Kansas. The first copy is paid through the student activity fee. Additional copies of the Kansan are 50 cents. Subscriptions can be purchased at the Kansan business office, 2015A1 Dole Hunan Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS, 66045.
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Proposed bills would change Supreme Court justice selection
ALLISON CRIST
@AllisonCristUDK
Kansas lawmakers will end their congressional recess on Wednesday and begin going over the 97 bills the two chambers passed last Friday.
Two of these bills call for amendments to the Kansas Constitution.
HCR 5004 calls for judges to run in partisan elections, and HCR 5005 allows direct appointment of judges by the governor with Senate confirmation (the "federal model")
The current system allows a nonpartisan nomination commission to accept applicants and then screen and interview them before sending three nominations to the governor.
Recently, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the federal model bill, with some of it coming from former Sen. Tim Owens.
to change the way judges are selected.
Owens was chair of the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee for four years. Owens said it was during that time that Gov. Sam Brownback began wanting
Owens said Brownback called him into his office four different times in attempts to convince him to support a change.
"Governor Brownback pointed his finger at me and said, 'Tim, why can't you go along with us on this judicial selection issue and let us change the way we select judges so we can get judges who will vote the way we want them to?' Owens said. Owens was surprised at the get he
"That's not something a lawyer or a governor should even vocalize." Owens said. "It just shows how adamant he is on wanting to control the courts"
Owens was surprised at the gesture, especially because he and Brownback are both lawyers.
Despite the situation that Owens described with Brownback, he remains adamant about the bill for additional reasons.
Also in disagreement with
"I believe the system to appoint judges should be based on merit, not on politics," Owens said.
HCR 5005 is State Rep. Dennis Highberger.
"Its main purpose is to give the Republican party control over the judicial system in Kansas," Highberger said.
righberger also believes the bill is in search of a problem, as he said there is nothing wrong with the current system.
"I can't imagine practicing in a system like that," Highberger said. "It would destroy my faith in it."
Another concern with HCR 5005 is the potential amount of conservative influence.
"Brownback already has a great deal of control in the legislature, as well as the executive branch," Owens said. "If he gains the ability to control the judiciary, where would the separation of powers that's mandated in the constitution be?"
State Rep. John Barker who is the Chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Gov. Brownback could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.
— Edited by Kelsi Kirwi
Kansas' largest electric company seeking $152M rate increase
The largest supplier. of electricity in Kansas is asking state regulators to increase its rates by $152 million annually to cover upgrades at power plants and other costs.
Westar Energy Inc. of Topeka said that the request it filed Monday with the Kansas Corporation Commission would increase its rates 8 percent and most residential customers would see monthly costs increase by between $9 and $13.
Westar has about 595,000 residential customers in Kansas.
the company said the higher rates would cover upgrades required by federal air pollution standards, particularly at a plant in LaCygne in east-central Kansas.
Westar also is part-owner of the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant near Burlington, and upgrades there will keep it operating until 2045.
The commission must decide by late October.
Associated Press
Studies:Global warming worsened droughts in California, Syria, contributing to Syrian chaos
WASHINGTON — The conflict that has torn Syria apart can be traced, in part, to a record drought worsened by global warming, a new study says.
In what scientists say is one of the most detailed and strongest connections between violence and human-caused climate change, researchers from Columbia University and the University of California Santa Barbara trace the effects of Syria's drought from
the collapse of farming, to the migration of 1.5 million farmers to the cities, and then to poverty and civil unrest. Syria's drought started in 2007 and continued until at least 2010 — and perhaps longer. Weather records are more difficult to get in wartime.
"There are various things going on, but you're talking about 1.5 million people migrating from the rural north to the cities," said climate scientist Richard Seager at Columbia, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It was a contributing factor to the social unravelling that occurred that eventually led to the civil war."
SEE FOOD PAGE 1
But, Seager said, this is the "single clearest case" ever presented by scientists of climate change playing a part in conflict because "you can really draw a blow-by-blow account with the numbers."
Associated Press
The study's authors do not claim climate change caused Syriac's civil war. It's not that simple. Lead author Colin Kelley at the University of California said there are numerous factors involved, including the oppressive Assad regime, an influx of more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, the tumult of the Arab Spring, as well as the drought. Kelley and Seager said they couldn't say which factors were the most important.
scraps and inedible portions, peelings, that kind of thing. We see it, but to be honest we're see less of it."
Cost-wise, Kidwell said that recycling and composting is beginning to balance out. KU Dining has cut back costs on going to the city landfill by about 80 percent through composting. However, the cost of composting and the addition of costly biodegradable trash bags counterbalances the savings KU Dining creates through the use of the city landfill.
"The commitment to a more sustainable KU and to the Lawrence community is important to us, and I joke it always costs green to go green." Kidwell said. "We know that, but we're committed to it, so we just work that into the budget."
Trying to figure out how much food to prepare can result in making too much, a problem KU Dining is trying to curb.
"There will be waste just because it's difficult to predict exactly the amount you need and the amount [of people] who are going to show up for a meal, but we try to get as close as we can to the actual amount," said Nona Golledge, director for KU Dining.
Kidwell and Golledge said KU Dining has taken steps to handle food waste and to avoid sending it to the landfill, such as implementing tray-free dining in the residential dining halls in 2008. Kidwell said KU Dining hasn't tracked how much waste it has saved since its implementation, but she estimates it has had a significant impact.
KU Dining uses a menu management system that relies on data to help dining staff make decisions about how much food to make and what to serve. Kidwell said this system tracks how much of a menu item is used. KU Dining then uses the data to decide whether to maintain or reduce usage to help limit overproduction of food.
Another key factor to reducing food waste is proper portion size. Kidwell said.
"Serving smaller portions, specifically of what were considered center of the plate entrees or proteins, is fast becoming the more nutritional-savvy way of eating," she said.
"We look at KU Dining as contributing to the educational mission of the University," Golledge said. "We're considered a learning laboratory, if you will, for students."
The University has partnered with Missouri Organic, a company that composts food waste located in Liberty, Mo., to compost the rest of KU Dining's compostable waste not donated to KU programs and local farmers.
KU Dining partners with local farmers, the Center for Sustainability, KU Recycling. KU Biodiesel Initiative, Daily Bread at the Center for Community Outreach, KU Enviros and KU Fights Hunger to help reduce its food waste by giving leftover food to these programs.
"四 years ago we decided to be proactive knowing that KU Dining does probably have the largest portion of compostable material waste, so we went and did research [and] partnered with them," Kidwell said.
She said that KU Recycling picks up the rest of KU Dining's recyclable waste.
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MINEAR/KANSAN
Golledge said the University has received recognition for its efforts to decrease food waste. The University has participated in Recyclemania, a nationwide college recycling competition, as well as competitions between Big 12 schools at home football games.
In the 2013 Recyclemania competition, Kansas came in 228th out of 273 colleges and universities with 17.15 percent of its waste redirected from the landfill by composting or recycling. Kansas did not compete in 2014 or 2015.
"We always want to take every opportunity to let campus know that this is an area we take really seriously, and we do work daily to help limit over production and food waste, both pre- and post-consumer waste," she said.
Kidwell said everyone can help to reduce waste at the University, too.
"We can all help by simply watching portions, not taking more than we intend to consume, [being] more mindful when we're eating." Kidwell said.
Kidwell said KU Dining is always looking to help limit food waste.
Edited by Emma LeGault
FROM SECURITY PAGE 1
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"You really have this multi-generational association here at this particular conference and that's not true at every single venue," Wilhelm said. "So that's what makes this one special."
"You saw a really interesting cross-section of people across different faculties talking about these issues," said Bart Redford, the assistant director of CREES. "I tend to think of that as one of the great accomplishments of these security conferences."
CREES's security conference has taken place for several years, Redford said, but this year is the first year that the conference has not received funding from an Army research grant.
ISIS.
Director of the University's Foreign Military Studies office in Fort Leavenworth, Tom Wilhelm, said he found it important to bring together people of several different backgrounds for the conference.
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As
"You saw a really interesting cross-section of people across different faculties talking about these issues."
BART REDFORD Assistant director of CREES
"It was a short-term grant. It ran for the four years it was supposed to run. It wasn't unexpected that we would lose that, we are just trying to keep the tradition going." Redford said.
T
— Edited by Chandler Boese
LAUREN MUTH/KANSAN
Senior Fellow Roger McDermott of the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Program and fellow colleagues set up his presentation on conflict in the Ukraine. The global hotspot security conference was held in the forum of Marvin Hall on March 2 from 1-4 along with free admission and was open to the public. Many members of the local military community attended the event to converse on national issues.
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