THURSDAY,APRIL3,2003
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN • 7A
Small-town guy adjusts to college
By Megan Hickerson
mhickerson@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Dan Nelson/Kansan
Every face in the crowd and every name in the phonebook has a story behind it. Every week, Kansas writer Megan Hickerson tells the story of a randomly selected KU student
Justin Moravec's whole town could move into three floors of McCollum Hall.
Moravec came to Lawrence as a timid freshman from a small town.
Morrill, just south of Nebraska, is complete with a Dairy Queen, Subway and a Pizza Hut — the gas station closed down because of a lack of business.
"I felt really sheltered," Moravec said. "I didn't know what was going on in the real world—it was really a big culture shock."
Rather than spending his high school evenings partying with the majority of his class, Moravec camped out on the weekends
Faces in the Crowd
with his close friends. Because his grandfather is
Morrill sophomore Justin Moravec pauses between classes outside Wescoe Hall. Moravec, who is from a small town, said coming to the University of Kansas was a culture shock.
a preacher, Moravec grew up going to church every Sunday.
Randy Moravec, Justin's father, said he thought Justin would make the right decisions.
"Justin's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, and he knows when the line can be crossed," Randy Moravec said.
Justin sensed his father's concern when he came to visit KU.
"When my dad came, he didn't say anything, but I knew what he was thinking," he said. "He's probably wondering what I'm like when he's not here. I call him to let him knowI'm OK."
His days are filled with business classes, and he attends service at the Church of Christ in Lawrence whenever he can.
Moravec avoids smoking and excessive partying.
"I'd like to tell my own kids my beliefs, and this was how I was
raised. "Moravec said, 'I will encourage them, but it's ultimately their own decision.'
Aside from small town gossip and minimal restaurants, Moravec found it easier to date girls when he had a smaller group to choose from. He said that girls in Lawrence were not as easy to go up and talk to.
"I'm fairly confident, but sometimes girls here give me that don't even-look-at-me eye," he said.
Although Moravec has no plans to return to Morrill after he graduates with his business degree, he misses seeing the people that he's known for 18 years.
"It's easy to know what everyone's doing." Moravec said. "You know where everybody lives and know when they're home because you see their cars in the driveway."
— Edited by Brandon Gay
State well-prepared for 'agroterrorism'
WICHITA — More than a year after the terrorist attacks made the word "agroterrorism" part of the language, Kansas agriculture has never been so well prepared to deal with the threat.
The Associated Press
At the same time, the state's farms remain frighteningly vulnerable. Kansas agriculture officials say.
Limited state resources, great distances, unguarded crops and herds and the ease of a deliberate
"Agriculture is so vast it is not like you can put a fence around it," said Lisa Taylor, representative for the Kansas Department of Agriculture.
infection make American agriculture an easy target for agroterrorism.
Jerry Jaax, associate vice provost for research compliance at Kansas State University, led a biohazard mission when he was in the U.S. Army that visited Siberia to witness weapons factories that produced smallpox and the plague. His experiences were detailed in the 1995 best-selling book, The Hot Zone.
Jaax said one of the government's major concerns when the Soviet Union fell apart was what would happened to the people who worked in the weapons programs. He said there was some anecdotal evidence that Middle Eastern countries recruited them heavily.
Agroterrorism received a lot of attention in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the anthrax mailings and growing fears of an assault on the nation's
food supply.
food supply
A long-proposed biosecurity research facility at Kansas State University got a boost with last year's announcement of a $3 million research project on foot-and-mouth disease.
Farm industry groups are also urging producers to be vigilant.
New proposals arise without tax increases
In December 2001, the Kansas Farm Bureau hired a retired agent for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation to study Kansas farms and put together a plan that producers can use to protect themselves.
No tax increases are contemplated in the $10.2 billion budget bill drafted Tuesday by House and Senate negotiators for the fiscal year that starts July 1. But it would leave the state with a deficit of about $230 million on June 30, 2004, according to legislative staff.
The Associated Press
Sebelius has not called for a tax increase. Her package includes proposals to accelerate the collection of local property taxes and some sales, income and mineral severance taxes, pulling $179 million worth of revenue into the next fiscal year.
TOPEKA — two more of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' proposals for preventing a deficit emerged from committee yesterday, after negotiators completed work on an unbalanced budget.
The House Taxation Committee yesterday advanced a bill accelerating property tax collections to the full House — but did not endorse it. The Senate's tax committee did the same for a bill accelerating the collection of the other taxes.
Sebelius also has proposed covering the budget deficit by issuing $175 million in bonds backed by the state's expected revenue from the national settlement with tobacco companies.
A special House committee voted Tuesday to send the bond plan to the full House but did not endorse it.
Under the compromise budget bill, most state employees would receive a 1.5 percent raise in mid-August. Sebelius had sought a full year's worth of the raise, while the Senate had voted to make it effective in mid-July and
the House had not approved any raises.
State aid to public schools would remain unchanged at $3,863 per pupil — a point on which the governor and both chambers had already agreed.
Votes on the budget bill are expected this week in both the House and Senate. Lawmakers begin their annual break on Saturday and are unlikely to study how to erase the projected deficit until they reconvene April 30.
Sebelius' tobacco bond proposal is part of her plan to raise $405 million to fund state government through mid-2004, avoid a tax increase or more spending cuts and create a $175 million cash reserve.
Other elements of the plan include an expansion of legalized gambling and accelerated collections of local property taxes and some state income and retail sales taxes.
Republicans on the special House committee studying the bond proposal expressed reservations about incurring long-term debt to fund annual operating expenses.
But House Speaker Doug Mays (R-Topeka) said he had promised House members they would vote on the idea. House debate is expected today.
"It's pretty tepid." Mays said of the committee's action. "It means the committee has problems with it, but we're not willing to kill it in committee."
The committee's minority Democrats wanted the proposal sent to the full House with the panel's endorsement. That effort was rejected on a 4-3 party line vote, with Chairman Ray Cox (R-Bonner Springs) abstaining.