CAMPUS: A student's thesis may lead to foreign language credit for sign language classes. Page 5.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VOL.103.NO.132
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
KANSAS STATE
HISTORICAL SOCIETY
TOPEKA KS 66121
WEDNESDAY. APRIL 6.1994
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
(USPS 650-640)
Trash team to dive in dumpsters
NEWS:864-4810
Joel Ginsberg, Overland Park junior, Sandra Mori, Lenexa senior, and Susan Ask, associate environmental ombudsman, look through the trash behind Carruth O'Leary Hall to analyze campus trash. They used the information to get a general idea of waste composition on a specific day and to develop campus recycling programs.
Jennie Zeiner / KANSAN
Surprise checks examine materials that get pitched
By Jamie Munn Kansan staff writer
The University's trash is one woman's treasure this week.
Sue Ask, associate environmental ombudsman, will be diving into campus dumpsters this week to sort through the University's ability to recycle trash.
About 10 dumpsters have been randomly selected for surprise trash checks this week, Ask said.
"It's important to have an understanding of the solid waste of the University," Ask said.
Ask said the garbage harvest also would be used to help plan for future recycling programs on campus.
"Right now, we don't have a campuswide program," she said.
Ask and her team of two students dropped in on dumpsters Monday night behind Carruth-O'Leary Hall and the Art and Design Building.
"It was more of a qualitative than quantitative search." Ask said.
During their two-hour examination, Ask and her assistants separated and weighed the contents of bags and boxes. The team determined the proportion of waste in each bag. It also recorded the size of the dumpsters, which range from one to eight cubic feet, Ask said.
"There are no totals yet, but the largest proportion, about 60 to 85 percent, is paper." Ask said.
Buildings with their own recycling programs, such as Wescoe Hall and Watson Library, have less waste, she said.
"That's typical for universities," Ask said.
Ask said Steve Hamburg, associate professor of biological sciences, had studied campus waste periodically before the
environmental ambudsman office had been established in 1990.
With the help of Judith Ramaley, then executive vice chancellor, the office was created to assess environmental issues on campus and to develop proposals to deal with them.
Sandra Mori, Lenexa senior, works in Ask's office. She said two of the requirements for the trash team were grungy clothes and good shoes.
"We had to get in the dumpster, and sometimes there's broken glass in it," she said.
Mori said that most of the trash in Monday night's search had been paper but that it also had included paper towels, cups, napkins and a small amount of food.
"We also saw some aluminum cans, which could have been recycled," she said.
In addition to regular trash, the team found art clay and broken ceramic forms in the dumpsters behind the Art and Design Building.
"We also found some yard waste, like grass clippings," she said. "We're not sure
where that came from."
Some of the trash searches are planned for evenings this week, but two excavations are planned for 4 a.m.
Mori said that trash pick-up services started at about 5 a.m. and that city workers usually started at the University.
After yesterday's snowfall, Mori said, she wants the weather to cooperate for the rest of the week.
"I have to do the 4 a.m. search on Friday, so I'm hoping it gets more sunny," she said.
Bosnian Serb troops attack U.N. 'safe zone
United Nations lacks soldiers to assist city
The Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Hundreds of civilians fled burning villages yesterday ahead of Bosnian Serb troops who breached defense lines around the Muslim enclave of Gorazde. U.S. officials said there were no plans to come to the aid of the besieged area.
Serb forces were two miles from the city center, and attacks were continuing, U.N. sources in Belgrade and Saraievo said.
Kris Janowski, a representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Sarajevo, estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 refugees had fled into Gorazde from a dozen surrounding villages south and southeast of the city. The refugees said their villages had been burned and destroyed by Serbian soldiers, he said.
Officials in the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government called the situation critical for the besieged eastern area, which was
declared a U.N. "safe zone" in May but has been unprotected by U.N. troops, who are stretched thin.
U. N. aid workers said 52 civilians had been killed and 249 wounded in a week of heavy fighting.
There was no sign that Western nations would intervene to help Gorazde's 65,000 residents, as NATO did with threats of air strikes to force the withdrawal of Serb artillery around Sarajevo.
Gen. John Shalikashvili, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Washington that air power would be ineffective against the primarily small-arms fighting around Gorazde.
"Tomorrow, the circumstances in Gorazde could very well change, and the use of air power could be very appropriate," he said.
Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, the U.N. commander in Bosnia, planned to go to Gorazde to assess the situation today. An official at the U.N. headquarters in New York said 10 military observers would
But that should not be seen as a "green light" for Serb attacks, he said. He did not flatly rule out intervention.
accompany Rose and would stay to augment the four observers already there.
Yasushi Akashi, the United Nation's special envoy to former Yugoslavia, was expected to meet Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic today to discuss Gorazde.
About 200 refugees blocked the entrance to Rose's Sarajevo headquarters yesterday and demanded immediate action to save Gorazde, which is about 30 miles southeast of the capital.
In New York, Bosnia's ambassador to the United Nations, Muhamed Sajirbey, accused U.N. officials in Sarajevo of misleading the Security Council about the severity of the Serb offensive.
The enclave has been under Serb siege during much of the 2-year war that began when Bosnia's government declared independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.
"Please inform Gen. Rose now ... tomorrow is too late," said protester Ibro Marsala.
"The situation is a lot more serious, a lot more alarming, than it has been projected," he told reporters.
A shortage of peacekeepers has kept the United Nations from extending Gorazde any special protection. The United Nations, however, is expected to post up to 1,000 Ukrainian peacekeepers in the city by late April.
Goradze's capture would give Serbs a more direct route, linking their holdings in southwest and eastern Bosnia.
A government army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Serb troops had broken through defense lines at three locations late Monday or early yesterday and that government soldiers had to retreat.
Renaud Tockert of the international humanitarian group, Doctors Without Borders, said the group's two doctors in Gorazde said that 11 villages had been destroyed and four others abandoned as of yesterday afternoon.
Ron Redmond, a U.N. representative said refugees told U.N. workers in Gorazde that eight villages had been destroyed and four abandoned. He said U.N. workers had reported that they could hear heavy fighting to the north and northeast of the town.
Blackmun to announce retirement
Justice is still remembered for 1973 abortion decision
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, author of the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision that in 1973 legalized abortion nationwide, will announce his retirement today, government officials said yesterday.
Blackmun, 85, has served 24 years on the nation's highest court after being appointed in 1970 by President Richard
A government source said that Blackmun would announce his retirement this morning.
Senior administration officials traveling with President Clinton said Blackmun was to issue a statement today.
As he left Charlotte, N.C., Clinton said he had not talked with Blackmun.
"As I understand it, he has an announcement to make tomorrow, so I think we should let him make it," Clinton said.
Harry Blackmun
Joel Klein of the White House counsel's office traveled to Charlotte to meet with Clinton and was traveling back to the White House with him. Among Klein's duties has been to help with judicial selections.
Another White House official said that White House scheduling officials had talked about the possibility of a significant announcement by Clinton tomorrow before he goes to the Midwest for health care events. They did not know the substance of the announcement.
The government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Blackmun's retirement would take effect at the end of the courts 1993-04 term, expected in late June.
The vacancy will give Clinton his second opportunity for a high court appointment. Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the court last year.
A lifelong Republican, Blackmun was considered a staunch conservative in his early days on the court. Today, he is considered by many experts to be the court's most liberal justice. But he has told friends that the court's politics, because of its newer justices, have changed far more than his.
Towering above all else in Blackmun's high court tenure was his role in the 1973 decision and subsequent abortion rulings. His authorship of Roe vs. Wade made him the most vilified Supreme Court member in history. Blackmun has received more than 60,000 pieces of "hate mail" in the past two decades.
The letters called him a murderer and a butcher. They compared him to the Nazi overseers of genocide. A devout Methodist, Blackmun received letters of condemnation from Methodist clergymen.
He insisted on reading all such mail.
"I want to know what the people who wrote are thinking," Blackmun once said.
After years of stopping just short of reversing Roe vs. Wade, the court in 1992 reaffirmed, by a 5-4 vote, the 1973 ruling's central holding — that woman have a constitutional right to end their pregnancies.
A triumphant Blackmun wrote that the victory was good law only as long as the current court was intact.
"I am 83 years old," Blackmun wrote then. "I cannot remain on this court, and when I do step down, the confirmation process for my successor may well focus on the issue before us."
But Clinton's election and his subsequent appointment of Ginsburg to replace Justice Byron R. White, an abortion foe, has lessened the anticipated impact Blackmun's departure will have on legalized abortion. Ginsburg is widely viewed as sympathetic tq abortion rights.
Two Washington names that would figure prominently in any list of successors to Blackmun: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and outgoing Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.
A beauty quest
Although supermodels tend to set society's beautystandards, the ideal they represent may not be healthy.
Page 9.
Independents hope to end greek senate
By Heather Moore Kansan staff writer
Independent candidates say they want to fight for students' rights by allowing drinking on the Hill and improving campus parking.
Bill Gist, candidate for student body president, said he was a good candidate because he was close to students.
"I understand the way students feel," he said. "This year, there was a problem between senators' opinions and students' opinions."
"The relations have been far too cordial," he said. "We need to work and fight to represent students fairly and equally."
Gist, Leawood senior, said he did not want Student Senate to be an arm of the administration.
Students should concentrate on the candidates — no the coalitions — in the elections, Gist said.
"One problem is that year after year, big greek coalfires run on the same issues, and they are somewhat unaccountable," he said. "No one pays attention to the people on the ballot. It needs to be people instead of coalitions."
Rules and regulations should be changed to allow a senator to be absent only three times. Gisl said.
"Rules and regulations allow a senator to be absent up to
six times," he said. "They are allowed to miss 40 percent of the meetings before they are kicked off."
Scott McDaniel, candidate for Senate vice president, said he and Gist had the qualities necessary to be good candidates.
"We feel we know what students want and need," he said. "We are in a good position to lead the students on this campus."
Changing the campus drinking ordinance is also a goal, said McDaniel, Garden City junior.
"The administration says, 'You're a child, and you can no longer choose if you drink at a game,'" he said. "We are adults. It's an issue of rights."
Senate and Graduate Senate should not be two entities, McDaniel said.
"It's a question of unity," he said. "We're all students. I believe in one voice."
Campus parking should be more open to students, McDaniel said.
"Parking is another place where our worthiness as humans has been limited by the officials," he said. "This campus belongs to students."
Part of the problem in Senate was its greek ties, McDaniel said.
Jennie Zeiner/KANSAN
Bill Gist, Leawood senior, and Scott McDaniel, Garden City junior, say their close contact with students and lack of ties to the Greek system would add balance to Student Senate.
"I wonder how a person can be in touch with the University if the only people they are in contact with are their fraternity brothers and sisters," he said. "Even today it is pretty much an absolute truth that greeks are white, upper-class, country club babies who have never lived in a dorm. If it's true that Student Senate is so Greek, and they are out of touch, that legitimizes us as candidates."