University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Monday, March 21, 1983 Vol. 93, No. 117 USPS 650-640
Hospital needs money to avoid reductions
By MICHAEL BECK Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA — If the University of Kansas Medical Center does not get $1.7 million from the state by June 1, it might have to reduce staff, close sections of the hospital or shut the entire hospital.
Richard von Ende, executive secretary of the University, said at the Board of Regents Fiscal Affairs Committee meeting last week that the Med Center needed the money to pay nurses' salaries and make up for decreases in its other operating expenses, or OOE, budget.
"IF WE CAN'T get the money," he said, "then June 1 we'd be shitting the hospital."
The committee and the full board both have approved the Med Center's requests for the
money. The requests not go to the Legislature,
and if approved, they will go to Gov. John Carlin.
The main reason the Med Center needs the money is reduced turnover among nurses, von Ende said.
When the 1982 Legislature approved the MEd Center's 1983 budget, it did not provide money for the MEd Center's full staff salary potential, because the department had the capacity that arises from these turnovers.
HOWEVER, EUGENE Staples, hospital administrator, said that this year all nursing positions remained filled because bad economic times were forcing more nurses to stay at their jobs, and others were returning to work.
Von Ende said that at this time last year there were 100 registered nurse vacancies and 75 additional nursing positions.
The Med Center is asking $1,125,935 from the state to nav this year's nurses' salaries, he said.
For the OOE budget, the Med Center needs $556,000 to make up for mandatory reductions in all Regents institutions' budgets in July 1982.
Von Ede said that if financing for OEE did not come through, the Med Center's hospital revenue might suffer because it could not serve as many patients.
THE MED CENTER is asking that it be allowed to increase its hospital revenue expenditures by $500,000 to make up part of the deficit.
Earlier in the year, Carlin eliminated a $1.2 million appropriation made by the 1982 Legis-lature for use in 1982 and 1983. The Med Center is asking that the appropriation be rested on the rest of the deficit.
In addition to the requests, the Legislature must wade through the Med Center's mistakes in budgeting for this year and next year because of current shortfalls at the Med Center.
Of the $1.2 million appropriation in 1982, the
Med Center won $18,407 in 1982 and none in 1983, leaving a balance of $1,181,563 — the amount the governor eliminated and the amount the Med Center wants back to cover current shortages.
THE MED CENTER did not include the remainder of the appropriation in its 1983 budget, which is one of the reasons for the current shortfall, nor did it include it in its 1984
The Legislature must now decide whether to re-approve the remainder of the $1.2 million from 1982 and whether the Med Center deserves more funding. The Med Center will receive $1.3 million for projected shortfalls in 1984.
Also for 1984, the Med Center requests that its budget be amended to include an additional $875,000 to cover reduced turnover in classified and unclassified positions, as well as an additional $463,561 for reduced nursing turnovers.
Weike Van der Velden, cultural anthropologist and European peace representative from Amsterdam, teaches at Bethel College in Newton, Kan., and travels throughout the Midwest to speak to groups about peace and justice.
Dutch Mennonite at Bethel works for peace, feminism
By ANNE FITZGERALD Staff Reporter
The source of the information is Weike Vander Velden, a European peace representative from Amsterdam.
NEWTON - Tucked away in a basement residence hall room on the campus of Bethel College is a wealth of information about issues ranging from feminism to the nuclear arms race.
Van der Velden is finishing an eight-month stint in North America with three months at Bethel College where she helps teach a peace and justice course.
HER ROOM IS decorated as many American students' rooms. Are posters adorn the walls, books fill the shelves and a button collection rests at a dresser.
One poster shows the words "Nuclear Free Zone" on a brightly colored illustration of Pacific island children. Another bears a Martin Luther King quotation about peaceful resistance, along with drawings of King and Mohatma Gandhi.
Without exception, Van der Velden's possessions speak a message reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam War protests in the United States.
And she dresses the part. Her gold-rimmed glasses, long, frizzy hair, and flowing, printed skirt are throwbacks to that era of unrest in the 1960s and early 1970s.
In fact, Van der Velden attribues the beginning of her activism to her experiences at a small college in Minnesota in 1972 at the pinacle of the anti-war protests.
Her parents were not outspoken activists, she said, but they shared their peace concerns and war stories with her. During World War II her father was deported to a labor camp where he received peaceful education. And as a Memoirs teacher, her mother is a peace teacher.
But her family and the Mennonite Church, known for its traditionally passivist stance, planted the seeds of her activism much earlier, Van der Velden said.
NOT UNTIL, she was exposed to the anti-war and feminist movements here did she begin to recognize oppression of women, including herself, she said.
Since her stay in the United States 11 years ago, Van der Veilen's quest for peace and justice has taken her far from her native Netherlands.
TO COMPLETE A master's degree in cultural anthropology, she spent a year in India researching and writing her thesis on rural women in northern India.
van der Velden said that before going to India she realized how women were excluded from anthropological literature. But she said the exclusion was common at all levels of academia.
"I in high school and at the university, I was trained on the rational side," she said. "I've never been quite happy with that. Although I looked forward to career, I felt like a teenager."
"The feminist movement has given me some answers, but it is still a struggle to keep moving forward."
Excluding the feminine side of humanity is not unique to educational institutions, Van der Veld said, but occurs in many social movements including the European peace movement.
"IN EUROPE, there is a large women's peace movement," she said, "but there is still male domination in the European peace movement."
Van der Velden said that feminism and peace went hand in hand.
"For me, peace is essentially a feminist issue," she said. "And I know a lot of people would disagree with that."
"But feminism is a movement to change social structures so that men and women can develop themselves to their fullest potentials.
Van der Velden said that both movements condemned the oppression of women and men in society.
"The MILITARY is one institution that particularly puts women down," she said. "It's run on male terms, it's male humor, and it has a history of denigrating women."
"Peace is a very wide notion that includes
Monday Morning
situations where people can live together with justice and love."
As part of her current North American tour, which the Mennonite Church is sponsoring, Van der Velden also traveling to Europe to go on groups about the European peace position.
Nearsighted people can get living lenses
She said she had made no definite plans to visit Lawrence.
And that means that the United States may initially have to make a unilateral step in the peace process, a step resisted by the Reagan administration and supported by European governments, Van der Velden said.
Van der Velden said that deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles in Europe had to be stopped, whatever the outcome of the Geneva peace talks.
EUROPE'S LOCATION and history account for the urgency of her message, which will be delivered on Friday.
Peace activists have welcomed her warmly, Van der Veled said, but some people opposed to the anti-nuclear movement have not been as receptive.
BY LAUREN PETERSON Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
People who need vision corrections soon may be able to order living contact lenses.
be able to othr training. Scientists are researching a technique that would allow people with impaired vision to have donor corneas sewn onto their eyes.
But despite critical comments and questions, Van der Veelden said, her experience in the clinic is solid.
The procedure, called epikeratophakia, is used mostly for people who have had cataracts removed, but recently researchers have also been using it for nearsighted people.
MILES FRIELANDER, clinical professor of ophthalmology at the Louisiana State University Eye Center in New Orleans, is a primary researcher of the technique.
He said epikeratophakia involved a piece of donor cornea that was frozen and then put on a lattice that ground in the correction of the patient's eye. The donor cornea, a custom-built, living contact lens, is then sewn onto the surface of the patient's cornea.
Friedlander said that research, started in New Orleans in 1978, had shown that once the lens had been ground to the right correction, it could be kept indefinitely, either frozen or in a glycerin solution, a sweet liquid derived from fats and oils.
Friedlander said, "What makes epikerapathology unique is we are taking tissue and changing its shape. This has never been done before." The new approach requires organs, but they've never been custom-shaped.
"THIS IMPLIES that corneae could be ground outside the operating room, even by a central facility, and sent to the surgeon on his order." said Herbert Kaufman, a New Orleans ophthalmologist who started the research with Friedlander.
Emily Varnel, research coordinator at the LSU Eye Center, said that in the epidermal technetium-based biopsies by allowing the central epithelium, the outermost layer of cells on the cornea.
A small groove is made on the patient's cornea she suture and the donor cornea is then placed.
THE MOST difficult part of the operation, she said, is waiting for the patient's epithelium to grow across the donor cornea. After surgery, she said, physicians place a soft contact lens on the eye for two or three weeks to serve as a bandage.
"The patient's cells migrate into the donor tissue, and in essence, there is a living contact lens." she said.
Friedlander said the first patients treated were those who had had a cataract removed
The operation, which she said costs from $2,000 to $2,500, is fairly short because the donor corns
years before and who could not wear a contact lens.
In the past, Kaufman said, a cataract patient who could not wear contact lenses had only two choices.
The patient could wear thick glasses, which magnify vision 25 to 35 percent and distort the periphery. he said.
ALTHOUGH SUCH glasses have been improved, he said, problems remain.
For example, he said, lines are bent and continually change shape as the wearer moves, causing vision to shimmer and appear unbalanced.
The second choice is a secondary lens implant, Friedlander said.
Lens implants, which gained popularity in the early 1970s, are used after cataract surgery. Doctors open up the eye and place a rigid plastic lens inside.
Because the lens implant has had such successful visual results, he said, he uses that technique instead of epikateraphykia on new cataract patients.
BUT, HE SAID, for a person who had a cataract removed years before, he would perform the epikerapatophakia procedure so he would not have to cut into the eye.
Byron Smith, clinical instructor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, has attended classes taught by Kaufman and is qualified to perform the epikateraphakia procedure. But he said he had been disappointed when he was the new operation as compared to the lens implant.
He said a lens implanted during cataract surgery was 99 percent successful, and that secondary implants were 95 percent successful. But, he said, the results of the new operation are not as successful in cataract operations as are the results of a lens implant.
"With the results that I've seen," he said, "I'm not convinced that the new operation will replace our existing systems."
"AT THIS point, I would not recommend the surgery to be done anywhere but where the research is being done. It's still in the experimental stages."
He agreed that the epikeraphakia procedure could be safer than the lens implant because the eye did not have to be opened up during surgery, and could possibly a 5-percent risk of infection in lens implants.
"We may see this catch on, but I think we are years from that," he said.
But Smith said he was excited about the New Orleans ophthalmologists' work with children and with those who had a condition called corneal surgery. The children in bulge forward and distort the vision.
He said that children who had congenital See.EXKX page 5.
Regents cut state academic scholarships
By JOEL THORNTON Staff Reporter
Kansas State scholarship recipients, will be studying harder for less reward next year because of a reduction in federal financing of the program.
"$35 IS N A>g significant statement for the state to make in times of financial difficulty," he said.
Stanley Kopilk, Regents executive director, said the award was lowered to $350 to allow about the same number of freshmen to receive stipends as in the past few years.
High school seniors are chosen as state scholars their senior year on the basis of their college entrance examination scores. Scholars with a GPA of 3.0 or stipends on the basis of financial need.
Jerry Rogers, KU director of student financial aid, said the new requirements would affect some KU recipients, but he did not know how many.
Reducing the scholarship stipend will force students to find other ways of financing their educations, he said, although it probably will not prevent anyone from attending KU.
"MOST OF OUR state scholars receive other financial aid, so the difference will be made up somewhere else," he said. "It probably won't be enough to keep them out of school. It's just another case where you have to tighten your belt."
Koplik said the Regents considered a variety of options before deciding on the new requirements, including a plan that would distribute all the money to the students, while not awarding money to new scholars.
Under the new requirements, about 650 of the 1,655 students designated as state scholars this year will receive stipends, he said.
THE FUTURE of the state scholar program could be in danger if federal support for the program is cut.
Federal financing for the program was reduced from $315,530 this year to $64,438 for next school year, Koplik said. The state gives only $50,000 a year to the program.
Kopik predicted that several hundred students would lose their scholarships because of the new 3.0 minimum GPA requirement. Previously, students were required to meet the financial aid academic requirements deter-
See SCHOLARS page 5
Weather
Today will be cold and mostly cloudy,
with a high in the mid-30s.
Tnight will be clear and colder with a low in the teens.
Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a high in the 40s.
Reagan may pick Ruckelshaus today
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — William Kuckelshaus arrived in Washington yesterday, where White House aides said President Reagan might announce today his nomination to take over the troubled Environmental Protection Agency.
ruckelshaus, who launched the agency during the Nixon administration as its first administrator, touched down at Washington National Airport at 8:50 p.m. he eluded reporters, but former Washington Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, also on the flight, confirmed that he had been aboard and had exited from the plane's back door shortly after it landed.
Before leaving Seattle, Rockelshus said that Reagan "is asking me to consider this, and I'm doing it." He said the question was whether he could be helpful in the job.
CBS and NBC both reported a meeting with Reagan was planned today. But the Washington Post, in its early editions, said Kuckelsahua would confer with White House senior staff members today about conditions under which he would accept the post. If the talks result in his agreement to take the job, a meeting with Reagan might be arranged, the Post said.
But White House spokesman Anson Franklin said, "I'm not aware of Mr. Ruckelshaus' plans in Washington or elsewhere."
A TOP EPA official said there could still be a bitch as the White House and Kruelhausk work out how strong a hand he will be given to run the agency and how to handle cases that affect his current employer, the timber giant Weaverhauser Co.
Sources said that if Ruckelshaus was nominated, it appeared certain that all political appointees at the agency would be asked to submit their resignations and some would be
White House aldes said Reagan was anxious to name a successor to Anne Burford as administrator of the embattled EPA and an announcement could come as early as today.
REAGAN, RETURNING from to the White House from a weekend at Camp David, Md., declined comment. "I'll see you in a few days," he told reporters, referring to a planned news report.
The agency is facing investigations by six congressional subcommittees and the FBI for its management of the $1.6 billion superfund toxic waste cleanup program. Several top officials already have resigned or been dismissed.
Burford resigned as EPA administrator March 8 to fire. John Hernandez was named acting administrator but Reagan must name a senate committee, an appointment requiring Senate confirmation.
One, Rita Lavelle, intends to defy a subpoena seeking her testimony today before a House subcommittee, her lawyer said yesterday. Lavelle, fired by Reagan in February from her job as head of the FBI, wants her ties to White house counselor Edwin Mee, Reagan's key aide.
RUCKELSHAUS, senior vice president of the Weyerhaeuser Co. of Tacoma, Wash., was EPA administrator from 1979 to 1973. He also served as acting FBI director, and resigned as deputy attorney general in the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre."
Reaction to possible appointment of Ruckelshaus has been generally favorable from critics of the EPA. But they said much depended on the much authority Reagan gave Ruckelshaus.
Samuel Epstein, an expert on toxic wastes from the University of Illinois, said yesterday the basic problem was the administration's overall environmental policy.
"The emphasis both in 'Congress and the media on cleaning up the mess in EPA really only addresses on part of the problem," Epstein, interviewed on CBS "Face the Nation," said. "Even if we get a 'Mr. Clean' — Ruckelshaus come to in head up the agency, will this solve the problem? With due respect . . . I think that it won't."