Wednesday
May 7, 2003
Vol. 113. Issue No. 150
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Tell us your news
Contact Kristi Henderson, Jenna Goepfert or Justin Henning at 864-4810 or editor@kansan.com
Kansas baseball match against Wichita State rained out p.1B
Eaghwoks
Matt Tribble
School faculty show support for sex class
The University of Kansas School of Social Welfare is standing up for Dennis Dailev.
Yesterday the school released a letter in support of Dailey.
The faculty have been concerned about the recent attacks on him, said Ann Weick, dean of the School of Social Welfare.
"This is intended to be a public show of support of him and the principle of academic freedom," she said.
Dailey
All but two faculty members in the school signed the letter, Weick said.
An open letter to the University community
During the past two months, a very important process has been unfolding as State Sen. Susan Wagle began her public attack on the school's human sexuality class and Dr. Dennis Dailey. Our school's mission has a "special commitment to helping vulnerable groups and individuals ... social workers celebrate differences among people and believe that respecting those differences — whether race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation or age — enriches the quality of life for all." Further, we see knowledge as empowering our students to reach their full potential.
The current assault by Sen. Wagle has been both personal and, in essence, an attempt to redefine the fundamental principle of academic freedom. If she succeeds, she has established the principle that the Legislature has the power to determine content in every curriculum in the Regents system.
The current assault by Sen. Wagle has been both personal and, in essence, an attempt to redefine the fundamental principle of academic freedom.
Given our school's commitment to marginalized groups, we are a logical first target. However, we will not be the last. Those programs that offer course
work that does not fit the personal beliefs of legislators become fair game for these tactics. As faculty we want to take a public stance that clearly asserts our right and society's need for a university environment that supports open dialogue about ideas that shape our future and decry personal intimidation or institutional extortion as a legitimate strategy to silence those positions differing from our own.
We continue to support faculty efforts to provide students with information that fits with our school's mission and empowers students to make informed decisions about their lives.
Signed:
Sandy Beverly, assistant professor
Ed Canda, professor
Rosemary Chapin, professor
Catherine Crisp, assistant professor
Goody Garfield, associate professor
Scott Harding, assistant professor
Helen Hartnett, assistant professor
Steve Kapp, associate professor
Jim Kreider, teaching associate
Holly Nelson-Becker, assistant professor
Deb Page-Adams, associate professor
Jean Peterson, associate professor
Chris Petr, professor
Judy Postmion, assistant professor
Allan Press, associate professor
Charlie Rapp, professor
Dennis Saleebey, professor
Ed Scanlon, assistant professor
Margaret Severson, associate professor
Rick Spano, associate dean for academic programs and associate professor
Ann Weick, dean and professor
Fraternity to demolish house
By Jessica Palimenio
jpalimenio@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Demolition may soon begin at 1510 Sigma Nu Place because Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity found it more feasible to build a new house than to renovate its current one.
Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity was planning major renovations to the house this summer but found that it was not financially feasible to make the renovations.
"Issues in the structure of the house came up that increased the cost of rehabling the house," said Lance Weeks, resident of the Corporation Board that oversees the chapter.
During an alumni meeting Sunday, the group decided it was better to build a new house.
"It was just better to move on to plan 'B,'" said Gene Dunham, Corporation Board member.
Scott Silverman. Lambda Chi Alpha president, said the house was not fitting the chapter needs anymore, but others said there were other reasons for the group to move out.
Cory Yates, Shawnee senior and Lambda Chi Alpha member, said appraisers determined the house was "uninhabitable" because of mold colonies that have grown.
"They said it was worth the price of the land minus demolition," Yates said.
"Issues in the structure of the house came up that increased the cost of rehaping the house.
The fraternity is negotiating the purchase of the land it currently lives on. Lambda Chi Alpha has been leasing the property for three years from Alpha Omicron Pi sorority which left the University in the summer of 1996.
Lance Weeks
Lambda Chi Alpha Corporation Board resident
The fraternity has brought in negotiators from Lambda Chi Alpha Properties from the national office.
The group decided the expertise of the national office would be helpful.
"They can dot their 'i's and cross their 't's a little bit better." Silverman said.
Dunnhaused the board was also looking at several other properties.
They would be using local companies to complete the work, but it was too early to make any decisions. Dunham said.
"You have to have the land first and we don't have the land locked up yet," he said.
The men who live in the fraternity house will be moving into an apartment complex this summer until the construction is completed.
Mushrooms in high demand
Edited by Jason Elliott
Mushroom hunters search to find elusive top-of-the-line fungi
By Kelley Weiss
kweiss@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
John Pendleton, owner of a local country market, said his waiting list for morel mushrooms this season was about 50 to 60 people.
Pendleton said the Pendleton's Country Market, 1446 E. 1850 Road, started taking names for the list in January and people called as early as January 1 to get their names at the top of the list.
SEE MUSHROOMS ON PAGE 10A
This season, Pendleton's bought and sold more than 400 pounds of morels, a popular gourmet mushroom, for $25 per pound, with roughly 20 to 25 mushrooms in a pound. All of the morels this season came from mushroom hunters — ranging from locals to mushroomers, as they refer to themselves — who drove three to four hours from towns such as Concordia and Hutchinson.
Pendleton said morels were so popular because customers were fanatical about the taste of them and some had nostalgia of childhood times spent hunting them. Finding morels is difficult and the mystery surrounding their location makes them even more desirable, he said.
Pendleton's paid hunters $16 per pound this year. The number of morels found each season varies, but this year was by far the best season, he said.
Linda Cowden, produce manager for The Community Mercantile Co-Op, 901 Iowa St., said during the morel season — April and early May — her store bought morels from local hunters. The morels sold for about $16.99 per pound at the Mere this season.
Kelley Weiss/Kansan
Because of the morels' elusive nature, Cowden said she did not count on getting them consistently. The supply of mushrooms can vary largely season to season.
Jeremiah Teller, Lawrence resident, hunts mushrooms. He started hunting morels seven years ago and now likes to hunt morels and other kinds, like chanterelles and oyster mushrooms. Teller said he hunted edible mush-
"We turned away more mushrooms than we bought and sold," he said. "That's huge."
"The morel thing is really sporadic." Cowden said. "We don't know when they are coming and they sell quickly."
Richard "Skip" Kay, former professor of medieval studies and co-author of A Guide to Kansas Mushrooms, puts a shelf mushroom in his basket on April 12 in the woods at West Campus. Kay and his wife go mushroom hunting frequently, but Kay said few mushrooms had sprouted because of the lack of rainfall this year.
Insects help fungi survive in symbiotic relationship
By Kelley Weiss
kweiss@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Mushrooms are fungi. But fungi are more than just mushrooms.
Robert Lichtwardt, former professor of mycology, said fungi is a much broader term.
"Fungi includes yeast, water organisms, morels, mushrooms and many others," Lichtwartt said.
Lichtwardt said a specific type of
fungi, trichomycetes, was intriguing to him when he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign because they were unusual.
Merlin White, a post-doctoral researcher for Lichtwardt in the department of ecology evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas agrees that the trichomycetes are an unusual fungi because of their
SEE FUNGI ON PAGE 10A
Filth in hall distressing to residents
By Robert Perkins editor@kansan.com Special to the Kansan
Editor's Note: Robert Perkins is also a resident at Stephenson Scholarship Hall.
A pool of blood roughly 2 feet wide and 1 foot long sat on Stephenson Hall's kitchen floor for two days last semester before somebody cleaned it up.
The blood came from a log of frozen beef that Joshua Stites, Shawnee freshman, had improperly defrosted by leaving it out on the kitchen counter overnight, a violation of Kansas Department of Health and Environment regulation 28-23-3. By the time he cooked with it the next day, it had dripped blood onto the floor and turned from red to gray.
"It just disgusted me. I recognized the fact that I eat food that comes out of that room, and it's never sanitary by any stretch of the word," said Ian Ostrander, Emporia sophomore and vice president of Stephenson.
"If I'd had time to clean it up, I would've," he said. "But I was busy cooking with the rotten meat for lunch."
The kitchens in Stephenson Hall, one of the 10 scholarship halls at the University of Kansas, have been unsanitary for as long as the oldest resident, Leonid Tolkachev, Overland Park fifth-year senior, can remember. Dirty as it is, the state can do nothing about it because a loophole in the Kansas Legislature's statutes exempts scholarship hall kitchens from the KDHE inspections that other campus eating establishments like Mrs. E's must go through. If KDHE ever did start performing inspections, scholarship hall residents worry that the halls' kitchens would be shut down.
During the warm months of the year, Stephenson Hall becomes the home of a new group of residents: flies.
"They land on what we eat, what we cook, our plates, utensils and generally feed on what we do." Ostrander, who served as a dinner cook during fall 2002, said. "I didn't like cooking in that kind of environment, and I don't want to live in it."
Flies aren't the only problem at Stephenson. Grease lies in a puddle next to the ovens, meat and cheese are left out for hours at room temperature and bits of food stick to the bare feet of residents cooking dinner — bare feet being a violation as well.
In a scholarship hall, the 40 to 50 residents take care of the cooking and most of the cleaning, and in return they pay an average of $1,400 less per year for housing than residence hall residents.
SEE FILTH ON PAGE 9A
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