WEDNESDAY,JUNE25,2003
NEWS
Y
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 5
FESTIVAL
Enchiladas, tamales draw diverse crowds
Dancers congregate under the lights to the sounds of the La Mañana Band at St. John's Fiesta Mexicana Friday.The Fiesta, held both Friday and Saturday nights, featured traditional Mexican dancing and food, with all proceeds going toward the St. John's School.
By Brandon Baker bbaker@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
Zach Straus/Kansan
The 22nd annual St. John's Fiesta Mexicana concluded Saturday night after two days of food, music, dancing and games.
St. John the Evangelist Church sponsors the festival annually to raise money for the church and St. John's School.
Frank Lemus, Lawrence resident and member of St. John's, said the food was what drew people back year after year.
"The food is the heart and soul of the festival," Lemus said. "Without it the festival wouldn't function."
In January, members of the church began preparing the tamales, Loretta Chavez said. The morning of the festival, 15 "faithful ladies" began steaming the tamales.
"I didn't get to see the daylight," Chavez, Lawrence resident, said. "I got there at 5 a.m."
She worked until 9 p.m. Saturday preparing 1,500 enchiladas for the festival.
"I do it for church because that's what it's really all about," Chavez said.
Chavez's two daughters, Christie Green and Kathy Douglas, were with her in the kitchen. Green and Douglas, both Lawrence residents, have assisted with the festival since they were children, Chavez said.
Families help in the kitchen,but are also drawn to the festivities outside.
Chara and Steve Mock, Lawrence residents, brought their daughters to the festival because of the "good families" there.
Families were just one type of crowd drawn to the festival's food, music, beer, dancing and games, according to Buddy Langford, a church member.
"There are three crowds that come; a
crowd that comes to eat, a family crowd and a party crowd," Langford said.
Shane Meyer, Lawrence resident, said the festival unified the city and was an important part of Lawrence.
"I don't care if you're from Lawrence or KU, you gotta come," Meyer said. "This is awesome — this is Lawrence."
— Edited by Maggie Newcomer
Construction dust sets off Strong Hall fire alarms
By Maggie Newcomer
mnewcomer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The increase in fire alarm calls to Strong Hall has nothing to do with fire.
Les Rollins, physical plant supervisor for facilities operations instrumentation, said the SimplexGrinnell alarms were going off as a result of dust from construction in the building.
James Long, vice provost of facilities planning and management, said the offending construction was in room 29 of Strong Hall.
"The alarms can't tell the difference between dust and smoke," Rollins said.
Rollins said he noticed an increase in
calls to the hall after construction began this summer.
According to the Lawrence Journal World, there have been six fire alarms at Strong Hall since the end of the spring semester.
The instrumentation department can disable an alarm from the Dole Human Development Center, where the department is located. But, he said, contractors in Strong Hall didn't know to call facilities operations and had been calling the police instead.
Rollins said facilities operations responded to all fire alarms on campus, with the most common cause being burnt popcorn.
Rollins blamed human error, not alarm
sensitivity, for the false alarms. He said someone was ignoring procedures and not informing facilities operations when the alarms went off.
Bob Rombach, University fire marshal coordinator, agreed that procedures were not being followed.
Long said the alarms were not malfunctioning, they were detecting a problem and going off.
"The alarm shouldn't be going off all the time." Rombach said.
"I'm not going to say that it's not inconvenient," Long said.
The alarms, installed in Strong Hall in 1998, can calculate the percentage of smoke, or dust, in the air, Rollins said. When that percentage reaches a dangerous level, the alarm sounds.
Tammara Durham, associate director of the Freshmen-Sophomore Advising Center, works in Strong Hall. She said she had gotten used to the fire alarms and was no longer surprised when they went off.
"We joke that they're more likely to go off when it's raining," Durham said. "Then we'd all have to stand in the rain for 20 minutes."
Although employees in Strong Hall have adapted to the alarms, Long said he wasn't worried that people would stop taking the alarms seriously.
He said every time an alarm sounded, everyone took the proper precautions.
-Edited by Annie Bernethy
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