University Daily Kansan / Thursday, February 20, 1992
CAMPUS / AREA
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Finney's budget OK with Budig
KU administrators want more, though
By Greg Farmer
Kansan staff writer
TOPEKA - Chancellor Gene Budig said yesterday that the University of Kansas was satisfied with Gov. Joan Finney's budget recommendations but would battle to get more.
Budig and Del Shankel, interim executive vice chancellor, explained KU's budget request to subcommittee members from the House Appropriations Committee.
Budigsaid KU's request was modest compared to previous years and the University's needs.
"The Board of Regents directed that our 1993 budgets not include any new initiatives or programs but focus on current activities," he said.
Budig said he understood the state was facing a tight budget year.
"But we believe the state has the resources to protect the investment it has made in higher education, and, for the sake of its future, it must," he said.
"Thus, we hope that as the legislative session progresses, you and your colleagues will be able to make some changes to the governor's recommendations."
Budig said the University's top priority was to find the money to plan the rebuilding of Hoch Auditorium. He also said the Legislature needed to find a way to increase faculty salaries so KU could keep its best faculty.
Budig said he was happy the governor had recommended a 4 percent
"It will help us keep pace with this year's inflation and meet some of our most critical needs in library computing and equipment," he said.
Shankel said KU's financing for operating expenditures was 65 percent of its peer schools' funding for operating expenditures.
Kansas 1992 Legislature
--mended a 100-percent fee waiver for graduate teaching assistants.
"Businesses expect our students to be trained on modern equipment," he said. "Our equipment had not been modernized at a rate that keeps up with technology and that puts our students at a disadvantage."
Budig said he was pleased with the governor's recommendation to finance KU's 1993 enrollment adjustment, but that he was disappointed that the governor did not recommend money for the 1992 enrollment adjustment, which was not financed last year.
"Our enrollment is very stable, but we continue to experience a shifting of enrollment from lower-division undergraduate to more costly, upper-division undergraduate and graduate offerings," he said.
Budig and Shankal said they were pleased that the governor recommended a 100-percent fee waiver for graduate teaching assistants.
Budig the fee waiver was necessary for the University to remain compatible.
"We cannot compete effectively for those graduate students without a full fee waiver and increases in GTA salaries." he said.
Shankel said the fee waiver would help the University provide better undergraduate teachers.
"GTAs are teaching about 24 percent of our undergraduate credit hours," he said. "These people are faculty in training, and it's very important for us to attract the best young teachers."
Shankel said KU operated at 85 percent of the cost of its peers' operation costs, but the student credit hours that KU faculty members taught were 115 percent of those that their peers at similar institutions taught.
"We want you to think of us as a great investment," he said. "You really are getting a fantastic bargain."
Kristen Petty/KANSAN
Against all odds
Dewey Jessep(left) of the Kickapoo reservation and Pete Fee of White Cloud rally behind Frank Wahwassuck (right), chair of the Kickapoo school board, as he voices his opposition to a bill that would outlaw
casino gambling in Kansas. More than 75 protesters gathered on the steps of the Statehouse in Topeka yesterday to show their dismay at the Senate's tentative approval of the bill.
Hoch rebuilding tops KU priority list
Kansan staff writer
By Greg Farmer
TOPEKA — Chancellor Gene Budig and Del Shankel, interim executive vice chancellor, told a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday that the university was of ten priority for the University of Kansas.
"It was an essential part of our academic mission."Budig said.
Budig and Shankel explained KU's budget request to subcommittee members from the House Appro-
portion.
Budig said the 64-year-old Hoch Auditorium, which was gutted by fire after it was struck by lightning June 15, served as more than KU's performing arts center.
"The Hoch fire destroyed 7 percent of our classroom space," he said. "Only through ingenuity and unprecedented cooperation have we been able to
accommodate in other facilities most of the classes scheduled for Hoch."
Budig said more than 950 students had been denied enrollment in the classes scheduled for Hoch because those classes had to be moved to smaller classrooms.
The University of Kansas and the Board of Regents had requested $1 million for fiscal year 1993 to plan the reconstruction of Hoch. After planning, $17 million will be needed for KU's plan to rebuild Hoch.
*Enrollment pressures are causing many departments to use large lecture classes to accommodate students.
Budig and Shankel said yesterday that they hoped the Legislature would consider the issue and appropriate the necessary money.
But Gov. Joan Finney did not recommend financing the planning of the Hoch project in her fiscal year 1993 budget pronosal.
"If this committee could find $1 million to appropriate to the University of Kansas for whatever use the University deemed appropriate, would you use that money to plan the rebuilding of Hoch?" Vancrum asked.
Rep. Bob Vancrum, R-Overland Park, said he was also frustrated by the Hoch situation.
"Hoch had become an important teaching building," Shankel said. "We need that space back, and we will do whatever we can to get it back."
Toi Willis, executive secretary for Student Senate, said Hoch Auditorium should be the University's top priority.
"We need legislative support for the rebuilding project, but we also need to go to the alumni," she said. "We need to tap into some of those outside funds, too."
Shankel said the Hoch project would be planned if $1 million were appropriated.
DerekNolen/KANSAN
Brod Rembemy, assistant city manager of Lawrence, is trying to help Rod Lawrence recruit more minorities to fill government positions.
City manager helps to recruit minorities
By Andy Taylor
Kansan staff writer
Rod Bremby sits in his fourth-floor office at City Hall and stares out at the Kansas River. But Bremby, assistant city manager, is remembering his childhood days along the banks of the Chattahoochee River in southern Alabama.
He lived there with his family amidst racial tensions that marked the South in the 1960s — days when races were separated by ignorance and more tangible reminders such as signs that read "Whites Only" and "Negroes Only."
"I went through the Jim Crow segregation," he said. "I was one of three Black kids who were the first to integrate into Western Heights Elementary School. That was 1967, 13 years after the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision. I remember going through some very hostile times."
Eufaula, Ala., was not the only place where Bremby, the son of an army officer, experienced racism. He recalls the days of living in Arizona when a neighbor, in a fit of anger, called him "nigger"—or the days he lived in Germany when people would give him money just so they could touch his dark skin.
Now, he is working to battle racism in the Lawrence community and open up jobs for minorities.
"In terms of city organization, we are trying to recruit and retain qualified employees, not just certain people," Bremby said.
He said that when Lawrence police recently commissioned 22 new officers, the department filled half of those positions with minorities. Seven members of minority groups were recently hired by the Lawrence Fire Department, he said.
According to a report released in 1991, 15 percent of the city employees were members of a minority. Nine percent were African American.
City employees
Bremby, assistant city manager since 1990, said that the city would like to see more minorities working in civic jobs, but that all applicants had to be considered by the same standards.
A look at the ethnic makeup of the 543 full-time city employees.
African American 9.4%
Hispanic 3.1%
Asiatic-Pacific Islander 1.3%
American Indian 1.5%
Source: Ray Hummert, city clerk
Bremy said the city's affirmative action program was a necessity if opportunities in the job sector were to stay open for minorities.
"I'm a believer in the affirmative action program," he said. "A lot of the beneficiaries of the affirmative action probably do not realize how it has affected them."
Some things make the recruitment difficult.
"Public administration does not have a high-rewarding salary," he said. "But it does have intrinsic rewards. I think some people are reluctant to enter government because they think that the people in government seek political gain. I don't have the tolerance for politics."
City government is a complex structure, Bremby said, and many people, including minorities, tend to keep away from working for city government because of the political structure.
Ray Hummert, city clerk, is responsible for hiring and firing city employees. He has the departments at City Hall should reflect the demographics of the community.
"You can go through the departments and some might be represented very well by minorities," he said. "Others might not be represented like they should be."