The University Daily
Wet paint
Watson patrons rerouted as stacks get coat of blue. See story on page 3.
KANSAN
Cloudy High, 30s. Low, 20. Details on page 3.
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas.
Vol. 95, No. 84 (USPS 650-640)
Tuesday, January 29, 1985
All will share cost of specialized fees
By ANN PETERSON Staff Reporter
Students will pay more tuition this fall because they will share the cost of special class fees that now are paid only by students enrolled in those classes.
Because of a Board of Regents decision last summer, fees that are added at enrollment for certain students will be redistributed evenly to all students, Brower Burchill, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, said yesterday. The increase in each student's tuition still hasn't been figured, Burchill said.
"The $630,000 paid by fine arts, science,
architecture and engineering students for labs and equipment now will be divided up by all." Burchill said.
The fees, listed under "miscellaneous additional fees" in the timetable, range from $3 to $235. Some are flat fees; others are assessed on a credit-basis hour.
THE CHANGE HAS caused mixed feelings among students and administrators who are concerned about who is naving for the fees
and who is going to benefit from the redistribution.
Jerry Moore, associate dean of fine arts, said he thought the fee payment was unfair to students who weren't enrolled in the special classes.
"The students who are using the labs and the equipment should be the ones who pay for the lab."
"This will mean an English student who will have to pay for it anawara," Lucas said.
However, several students said they were glad the burden of paying more tuition soon would be lifted from their shoulders. Although their base tuition will go up, their total fees will not be as great now that everyone is sharing the cost.
"I HAVE TO pay an extra $150 to $200 a semester on materials for my art projects."
Kremlin leader ailing; likely follower named
See FEES, p. 5, col. 1
By United Press International
MOSCOW — President Konstantin Chernenko is thought to be seriously ill, and Moscow is again buzzing with speculation about his successor. The name most frequently mentioned is 53-year-old Poliburo member Mikhail Gorbachev.
Cherenko, 73, last appeared before the public in a televised awards ceremony Dec. 10.
Soviet officials have confirmed that the Kremlin leader is sick but, according to Soviet custom, have refused to provide details about his ailment.
Although the exact nature of his illness is a Kremlin secret, a senior Western diplomat said last week the Soviet leader had possibly struck a stroke, contracted pneumonia or both.
"It's obvious his health is declining," the diplomat said.
When Cherenko took office following the death of Yuri Andropov last February, he was the oldest man to assume the Communist Party leadership and many saw his stewardship as temporary — a manuever to allow Kremlin power blocks to assess the future.
BUT CHERENNKO QUICKLY rallied the military and foreign policy establishments behind him and was able to rule from a position of strength.
The Times of London newspaper reported yesterday the Politburo has discussed a plan
that would steadily decrease Chernenko's duties.
Under the plan, a new leader would take over the post of general secretary of the Communist Party but would not necessarily be a member, mainly ceremonial title, the newspaper said.
Gorbachev, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission, solidified his position as Cherenko's heir apparent last December when he traveled to London to meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to discuss crucial East-West arms control.
Other possibilities include Politiburo members Gregory Romanov and Geidor Aliov.
A Western diplomat said Gorbachev's "position looks good. It is not a foregone conclusion, but it makes sense. He and Romanov are the two senior members of the Secretariat (who are also in the Politburo) and he outranks Romany."
ALTHOUGH HE DOES not have the key Communist Party ideology post — a position that Chernenko held for himself — Gorbachev is in charge of supervising the work of the Central Committee, considered a top Kremlin job.
Romanov, 61, has been linked to the defense industry of Leningrad, where he is the first secretary of the Communist Party, a organization that gives him strong ties to the military.
An outside possibility is Aliev, a former
official who cracked down on corruption.
Meridel Le Sueur, afeminist writer, speaks about her early dience in the Pine Room of the Kansas Union. Le Sueur said writing experiences and reads some of her work to an au-yesterday that she began writing in the early 1930s.
Writer discovers new life with feminism
By PEGGY HELSEL Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Meridel Le Sueur calls herself "Mrs. Lazarus" because, she says, "I was buried and the women's movement dug me up."
A feminist and socialist writer since the 1930s. Le Sueur was blacklisted during the McCarthy era because of the radical nature of her writing.
Le Sueur, 84, bave a reading of her works yesterday afternoon in the Pine Room of the Kansas University. About 50 students were insured by the women's studies department.
Le Sueur writes poetry, fiction, autobiographical sketches and histories about her life in the Midwest, women in the Depression and the workers' movement.
"I came up in an era when a woman writer took a man's name." Le Sueur said. "Male editors told me to give up writing, good job and take care of my children."
She didn't listen to them.
"You could write about the suppression
of women as long as they were idiots or victims" she said.
Because her characters were neither, she wasn't able to get her works published.
After being blacklisted in the 1940s, Le Sueur dropped from the public's attention. She continued to write, though, and began to get her work published again by the feminist press at the beginning of the women's movement.
"PEOPLE UP TO me and tell me,
It's wonderful that you've been found.
I'll miss you."
Le Sueur, who said she started writing as soon as she learned to write, was born in 1923.
Her parents were radicals who supported the socialist labor movement. Because of their political beliefs, they were forced to move often.
The Sueur recalled a time during World War I when she and her family had to leave their home in Fort Scott in the south of the war, because of their opposition to the war.
The Le Sueur family has a long history of radical beliefs, she said.
"My grandmothers were all feminists. One thought you should stop drinking, so she went around Oklahoma with a horse and buggy and shotgun," Le Saur said.
"My mother chained herself to the gates of the White House fighting for the women's vote," she said. "they've all been radicals in different ways."
Le Sueur said she had a party on her 80th birthday.
"There were five generations of radicals there," she boasted.
The octogenarian writer refuses to slow down because of her age. She travels around the Midwest speaking and giving readings. She said she really didn't have a sense of what is going on in the winter" and enjoyed visiting her 24 great childrenin Minnesota.
Le Sueur said she wrote eight to 10 hours a day.
"I'm crazy about my own writing. I have three books to finish before the great rainstorm."
"I'm having the time of my life right now."
Students share dreams, ignore snores in sleeping dorms
By PATRICIA SKALLA
Staff Reporter
The darkness that envelops the room is too broken as the first rays of sunlight shine.
The silence is broken only by the alarms sounding one after the other in uneven clatter. No one speaks as the weary tumble out of bed to begin a new day.
Many students who live in scholarship halls, fraternities and sororites sleep with 20 people or more every night. They spend their nights together in sleeping dorms and keep their personal belongings in rooms called "studies."
Sleeping forms usually house from 10 to 50 people. Many of the rooms are climatically controlled so the residents can choose the environment in which they want to sleep.
Most Greek houses and scholarship halls have sleeping dorms to save space.
JIM MCSWAIN, LAWRENCE fire chief,
said Friday that the fire code required that
the sleeping dorms have adequate exits.
The dorms must also have access to fire
escapes and stairwalls.
In 1976, a fire in Baldwin City killed five fraternity members because of inadequate exits from their sleeping dorm, he said. After the incident, the state fire marshal went to all university towns in Kansas to implement additional safety measures.
He said the sleeping dorms were impeded once or twice a year to be sure they met the temperature.
"The windows have to be able to be opened, but they do not have to be opened all the time."
McSain said that although it took several years to get the sleeping dorms up to a
minimum standard, all the serious problems had been corrected. The problems now are less serious.
HOWEVER, MAINTENANCE PROBLEMS are not the only things residents have to worry about. Residents might have to endure pranks, resounding alarm clocks and freezing temperatures before getting a good night's sleep.
Susan Pinches, Lawrence sophomore, lives in the Alpha Phi sorority house, 1602 High Drive, where 20 women sleep in each of the house's five sleeping dorms.
But Pinches said that after one woman found rice in her bed, she ran screaming from the dorm to spend the night in her study.
Deb Stark, Scott City senior, said that the sleeping dorms at Watkins Hall were
The sleeping dorms are supposed to be dark and quiet 24 hours a day. Pinches can
supposed to be dark and quiet too, but that it didn't always work that way.
Stark said 49 women sleeping in two rooms made an ideal setting for practical lokes.
PINCHES EXPLAINED THAT the sleeping darner at his house had five different sizes.
The classifications — arctic, cold, warm,
hot and wet — are determined according to
the temperature at which the rooms are kept
year round. If the room gets hot, it gets to
those with sleeping dwell they want.
The "wet"sleep dorming got its name a few years ago when water leaked through the ceiling, she said. Although the ceiling does not anymore, the name has become a tradition.
Rick Jones, Elkhar freshman, said members of Sigma Nu fraternity, 1501 Sigma Nu Place, did not get to choose the climate in which they slept.
Not only do sleeping dorm residents have to brave an arctic chill or a balmy heat wave, they may have to contend with alarm clocks or vaults or friends who have a sporing problem.
Alexandra McMillen, Ft. Worth, Texas, junior and president of Alpha Chi Omega sorority, 1500 Sigma Nu Place, said that at first the alarms bothered her, but that eventually she was able to sleep through them.
Noller said that the Phi Gamma Delta house avoided the alarm clock problem by having pledges take wake-up duty. The system would be on duty up everyone at the time they have requested.
Jones said that although snoring was not usually a problem, he had an easy answer. He said it wasn't true.
"Just hit them with a pillow five times and that will do it." Jones said.
Insured drivers forgetting cards
By HEATHER R. BIGGINS
the morning Kathy Kelly left her parents' home to return to another semester of books, pizzas and pubs, she was sure she had remembered to bring everything — except her auto insurance card.
She had left the insurance card, car registration papers and the car manual on her parents' kitchen table. The documents were left there to dry after water had dried them out. She also helped Kelly's car. Kelly forgot them days later when she and three friends left for school.
"They weren't the most important thing on my mind." Kelly, Prairie Village
Besides, she thought, she would drive with care.
Kelly did drive with care, but someone else didn't.
Under the Kansas No Fault Insurance Law, every motor vehicle must be insured. And a law that took effect in July requires all vehicles of insurance at a police officer's request.
ON A FRIDAY evening out with friends, Kelly pulled her car into a bar's packed parking lot. The taillights of a car signaled its exit from a parking sneeze.
After a few seconds, Kelly realized that the car wasn't leaving, but entering the parking space. She drove on. But before she could get past the car, the passenger door flew open and hit Kelly's car. Kelly called the police.
The police officer requested Kelly's driver's license along with her insurance card. When Kelly told the officer she didn't
See INSURE. p. 5. col. 4
KU research uses cloning to fight cancer
By YASHWANT BHAGWANJI
Staff Reporter
A team of researchers at the University of Kansas is closing in on cloning two deadly poisons that one day may be used to kill cancer, a KU geneticist said recently.
The poisons, ricin and pokeween antiviral protein (PAP), are indiscriminate killers of cells, but by properly combining them with a specific drug called rifabutin, cancer, Robert Weaver, the geneticist, said.
"We hope it will kill tumors better and with lower side effects than other treatments."
The University, under Weaver's direction,
has a contract from El Lilly, a major drug
manufacturer, to produce clones of bacteria
wide large quantities of pure ricin
proteins.
Gene cloning, a potent tool of genetic
"ESSENTIALLY, CLONING IS a process that unlimited numbers of identical organisms."
engineering, involves inserting a gene into a bacterial cell. The passenger gene then reproduces along with the host cell, Weaver said.
But this therapy kills healthy cells, causes partial loss of immunity and causes hair loss.
Weaver, also a professor of biochemistry, said he had managed to clone the toxic agent found in ricin, but not to the point of use in large amounts for use in experiments.
"Chemotherapy, which treats the whole body, offers at the present the best hope of a cure once cancer has begun to spread."
"I hope we can do it this spring," he said. "We also have clones that look promising, but we can't prove they're PAP yet." Weaver said.
Genetic engineering could kill cancer cells without harming normal cells. Weaver said.
IN ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT, scientists have discovered an important clue to understanding the basis of cancer, said Weaver, who wrote "Beyond Supermusee: Changing Life's Genetic Blueprint," in the 1984 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Weaver said there appeared to be a group of at least two dozen genes in the human body that could transform cells from normal to cancerous.
The genes, called oncogenes, contribute to the normal growth of cells until they are disrupted, Weaver said. The disruption, which may be ignited by radiation, chemicals in food, water or cigarette smoke, and other environmental influences, mutates the
See GENES, p. 5, col. 1