University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Thursday, April 21, 1983 Vol. 93, No. 139 USPS 650-640
Salary freeze plan draws protest
By JEFF TAYLOR Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
"We want a raise. We want a raise," the crowd chanted.
TOPEKA — In protest to a proposed one-year salary freeze, several hundred state employees staged a noon rally yesterday outside the Statehouse, waving signs and shouting for explanations from legislative leaders.
chairman.
Gov. John Carlin has asked the Legislature to delay any salary increase for six months, a move he said would save the state $10 million.
TOM SWEARINGEN, PRESIDENT OF THE Classified Senate at the University of Kansas, spoke to the crowd and said after the rally that he was surprised it became so vocal.
"It got rowdy. It got kind of insulting, really," he said.
The Classified Senate represents KU classified employees, who include most University employees other than faculty and administrators. Faculty members are unclassified employees.
Swaringen said, the employees reluctantly would go along with a 4 percent increase after a delay of six months, which would amount to an increase of 2 percent for the year. He said the employees wanted the state to pay compensation for increased income in health care benefit payments.
State employees have health insurance through Blue Cross-Blue Shield, he said. The insurance company announced a $15 increase on top of the $63 the state pays each month.
He said employees feared they might have to nav as much as $10 of the $15 increase.
ABOUT 500 CLASSIFIED AND unclassified workers, including other KU employees, voiced
anger at the Legislature for killing tax-producing legislation, such as pariimutuel wagering at race tracks. Additional revenue could provide more state money for 1983-84 employee salaries.
employee salaries.
“Build the race tracks! Give us a lottery!” a man from the crowd shouted. Another stood beside him with a sign that read: “Poverty Builds Our Character, But We Can't Eat Character.”
While the protesters organized just below the Capitol's south steps, senators inside were killing a resolution to place a state lottery on next April's primary election ballot.
A part-inutel gambling resolution died in the Senate last month.
senate last month.
The lottery, proposed by State Sen. Bill Morris, R-Wichita, required two-thirds approval by both chambers and voter approval in order to amend the state constitution. The measure failed 21-17.
UNDER MORRIS' PLAN, LOTTERYickets would have been sold for $1 each in convenient stores, liquor stores and other high-traffic businesses. Winners could have collected their prizes immediately at the business where they bought the tickets.
Skeptics said they did not think the measure would raise an estimated $50 million and said poor people would squander their money on lottery tickets.
Outside the Statehouse, state workers called on the Legislature to pass tax measures that could generate money for higher salaries.
could generate money in the state to booed house Speaker Mike Hayden, R-Atwood, State Rep. Bill Bunten, R-Topena, and State Sen. Paul Hess, R-Wichita, drowning out Bunten's efforts to explain the state's financial problems.
HAYDEN, WHO SIDED WITH SENATE President Ross Doyen, R-Concordia, earlier this week in proposing a yearlong wage freeze, told the crowd that state employees were in no worse financial shape than other workers in the state.
He told the crowd that the state could save $20 million by delaying public employee salary increases and said the state did not have money to pay for immediate increases.
"We know you are unsatisfied with a total or a partial freeze." Hayden said. "But if we can't raise new taxes, we simply don't have any way to raise salaries."
A member of the crowd shouted, "Maybe you ought to quit," as Hayden walked away from a rostrum at the top of the steps.
HESS DEFENDED THE LEGISLATURE'S treatment of state employees, saying the state had managed to keep all its employees on the payroll during the past 10 years.
"There are 10,000 machinists laid off in Wichita," he shouted above comments from the crowd. "Your salaries from your point of view aren't enough, but at least you have a job."
arent constantly it is highly unlikely that there will be any significant layoffs of any state employees."
Hess criticized Carlin for building hopes among voters that a severance wage would cure him.
Late yesterday afternoon, the Senate gave final approval to a plan to increase state personal income taxes for people in higher income tax brackets.
UNDER CARLIN'S PLAN, SINGLE people who make more than $35,000 and a couple that files a joint return for more than $60,000 will not be able to deduct as much from their federal taxes from the state return.
Soviets trade track shoes for cowboy boots
By ANNE FITZGERALD
Staff Reporter
"Do-si-do" may not translate into Russian, but that didn't stop 19 Soviets, here to compete in the Kansas Relays, from dancing the Virginia reel at a barn dance for them last night.
More than 200 people packed into a barn
northwest of Lawrence last night to fake part in what was billed as "down-home Kansas hospitality" for the visiting Soviets.
A huge banner that said "WELCOME" in big, red letters, both English and Russian, hung above the barn doors, which had been thrown open to the cool night air.
MEMBERS OF THE LAWRENCE Coalition for Peace and Justice cooked a potluck supper and the Alfred Packer Memorial Band
provided bluegrass and folk music for local dance groups.
Americans and Soviets filled their plates with the typically American fare, including fried chicken, baked beans and potato salad. Some people sat at the tables that had been provided, while others balanced paper plates.
Conversation with the Soviet visitors, some of whom spoke a smattering of English, was
See SOVIETS/page 5
A welcome sign hangs outside the D.L. Shirk barn northwest of Lawrence, the site of a "down-home" welcome party last night for the Soviet athletes who are visiting the University of Kansas for the Kansas Relays.
Denise Clemens, a firefighter for the Lawrence Fire Department, helped extinguish a brush fire yesterday in the 2800 block of Iowa Street. Clemens works at Fire Station No. 4, 2819 Stone Barn Terrace.
GLSOK allocation draws fire from some senators
Staff Reporter
By SARA KEMPIN
Despite objections from some senators that student money should not be used to finance Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas, the Student Senate last night approved a budget that would give the group $493 next year.
give the group a name and job.
Jim Cramer, student body vice president,
stepped down from his position as chairman to address the Senate at the nearly four-hour meeting to urge the senators not to finance the organization.
"AS YOU KNOW, the chairman of a group should be neutral, but he can step down if he feels strongly about an issue or thinks the Senate should hear what he has to say." Cramer said.
"I defend the group's right to exist, but it's crossing a line when you say 'I'll pay for this
group.' I don't think a majority of students on campus want to pay for the service the group provides.
"When you're talking about being elected by the students and representing them, you cannot decide on an issue such as this by how you think students should feel.
students should feel.
"We've got more services around than we've got money for. We've got to start making value judgments."
judgments;
THE SENATE WAS CONSIDERING a bill to finance student organizations in fiscal year 1984. The senate had $61,300.30 to allocate.
Loren Busby, chairman of the Finance and Auditing Committee, which had recommended the bill to the Senate, told the group that Lisa Ashner, student body president, had promised to veto the bill if it was amended to be over budget.
Ralph Munyan, graduate student senator, had
See SENATE page 5
CLOUDY
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy with a 10 percent chance of rain, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka. The storm will be from the southeast at 2 to 20 mph.
Tonight he will be mostly cloudy with a 60
percent chance of rain. The low will be 45
Tomorrow will be mostly the high of 60 and a chance of showers.
Some researchers link cancers to stressful lifestyles
Rv JENNIFER FINE
Staff Reporter
Research into the causes and treatments of cancer is an endless multi-billion dollar effort, as scientists seek to eliminate a disease that affects one in three persons.
personalties.
Some psychologists and scientists who are researching the effects of emotions and lifestyles on the disease think that they are finding what they call a cancer personality. A main factor in that personality is stress.
But some recent studies into cancer are not examining chemicals or foods as possible causes of cancer — instead, they are examining personalities.
PATRICIA NORRI, CLINICAL director of the Biofeedback and Psychophysiology Center at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, said she had treated patients as young as 5 years old for stress-related diseases.
stress-related issues.
"I definitely think stress is going up in our society. I think stress is at an all-time high," she said.
"Everything seems to show that emotional stress, combined with a hopelessness and helplessness about it — these two things together are heavily implicated in the capability to resist tumors and the capability to destroy them."
She also said that an ability to cope created conditions for fighting off the cancer cells and making the cancer recede, permitting a person to live longer with less pain.
WHEN SCOTT WAS 21 AND A senior at the University of Kansas, she was diagnosed as having thyroid cancer.
At the time she was attending classes, working for
the Kansan and preparing to enter the
teaching profession.
As many college students do, Scott was leading a fast-paced life full of school activities and pressures. She was too busy to have cancer.
She had an operation to remove the tumor, after which doctors told her she would not be bothered by the disease. But when she was 25, the cancer moved to her lungs.
After more surgery, radioactive iodine therapy and radiation treatments, the cancer again abated. She still had a few suspicious areas, but the medical treatments were stopped. She started a different type of treatment — she began to examine her emotions and her personality as possible causes of her cancer.
"For me, I knew W. Wolfe," she said. "Joseph MITCHELL, a Computerist, Fla., psychiatrist, through a newspaper assignment and decided to see him for some personal problems."
When she mentioned to him that she had cancer, he introduced the idea of stress, pressures and frustrations as a cause of her illness. He told her about the importance of their work in relating the mind and lifestyles to cancer, Stephanie and Carl Simonton and Lawrence LeShan.
Although she was skeptical, she realized the value of questioning why she got the disease and how to cope with it.
how to cope with the stress.
Scott followed the Simontons' suggestions by examining stresses in her life right before each onset of cancer. In each case, the disease had
struck when she let pressures build, striving for professional success while sacrificing personal needs.
"In my case, it made so much sense," she said. "To many doctors I'm sure it's still a real wacko idea."
WHILE SHE HAD TEMPORARILY quit work for treatments, she tried some of the Simontons' techniques of relaxation, meditation and mental imagery.
"I guess I'm just a walking, talking, optimistic statistic," she said. "I do feel incredibly healthy.
imagery.
And the treatments seem to have worked.
Scott said she was "unbearably healthy" this month.
my the man are worth it.
"For me, and people I've read about, I think there is a very convincing argument that stress causes cancer."
"I still work very hard and have some goals and expectations of myself. But when I think of the things that make me proud of myself, I no longer only think of work and being some sort of feminist icon, I realize there are other things in my life that are worthwhile.
For many people like Scott, cancer is more than a disease.
SCOTT NOW HAS CHECK-UPS for cancer only once a year.
"Cancer is a statement about how they live their lives," said Mitchell, the psychiatrist who first mentioned to Scott the possibility of a cancer-stress connection. "It's complex, difficult, and frightening."
Mitchell now practices psychosomatic medicine He treats illnesses that are both physiological and psychological.
( "Medicine has begun to realize it cannot leave out the mind and feeling." he said.
he said he did not treat the cancer in his patients, but attempted to make them ask themselves why they acquired the disease to see what could be contributing to their condition and this patients to recover a balance between having the disease and enjoying a healthy life.
"Our society doesn't want to believe that they got sick because of something personal," he said.
ing patients and medical protes See STRESS page 5