University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
The University Daily
KANSAN
Friday, September 11, 1981 Vol. 92, No.15 USPS 650-640
Former Emporia State professor wins lawsuit
By PENNICRABTREE
Staff Writer
Rodney Mitchell, a former economics professor at Emporia State University, believed disgruntled administrators hounded him from his job in the university because they disliked his liberal political beliefs.
So Mitchell sued. The university and four of its officials were named as defendants in a $1.8 million federal lawsuit, which was decided in April yesterday by a U.S. District Court in Topeka.
The jury awarded him $145,000 in actual and punitive damages, a verdict that is expected to be officially approved Monday by Judge Richard J. Korsick, according to the Topeka federal district court clerk
IN THE PAST, a grievance like Mitchell's would have been resolved in a lively internal committee investigation, the traditional tool for linking the between administrators and faculty or students.
But in increasing numbers, campuses across the United States are going to the courts settle disputes.
A group of California law students recently took their school to court because a popular course was dropped. A black Harvard instructor claimed that the exam he was denied tenure because of his race.
CLOSEER TO HOME, students at the University of Kansas College of Health Sciences sued the Kansas Board of Regents over a tuition increase.
At the University of Kansas and the Med School, there are 75 lawsuits or federal agency investigations underway. The majority of the suits are discrimination actions.
"I would say that the case load at KU has increased 100 percent in the past two years," Vicki Thomas, KU chief counsel, said yesterday. "KU judges are going to reflect what's going on throughout the country."
LITIGATION AGAINST KU has increased so dramatically, Thomas said, that KU has
requested that the Legislature hire another counsel for fiscal year 1982.
Both the causes and the costs of the recent phenomenal increase in litigation against universities are matters of hot dispute between administrators and faculty.
But many say beneath the accusations of you-done-me-wrong exchanged during recent court disputes, there are subtle reasons for the popularity of legal action.
"I think, beneath all the accusations of discrimination, that the real issue is a tight job market," said Phillip Grier, executive director of the National Association of College and University Attorneys, an association of 2,400 attorneys on 1,200 campuses.
"The job market is so tight in the field of higher education, people are being judged by stiffer standards and found wanting." Grier said. "Now, when an instructor is refused leave, he can contract renewed, he can resort to legal action and claim someone discriminated against him."
GRIER ALSO SAID that the abundance of
federal civil rights regulations and guidelines
1970s had contributed to the surge of litigation
"Now there are new ways to complain, and new rights to pursue," Grier said. "The University has a majority of the cases, and then they get at court for lack of merit. But the process costs."
However, Grier said legal actions against him could ultimately improve relations between factions.
"Legal action is also a tool for re-evaluating rights and responsibilities," he said. "As people understand the rules of the game, they'll play better."
Grier and others would not estimate exactly how much legal action against university costs, in turn, would be required.
"Aside from the fact that litigation is very expensive for universities, there is also an increasing motivation," Robert Fairmore, KU assistant counsel, said. "What that will mean for faculty-
administration relations in the future, I don't care to predict."
IN AN EFFORT to redefine university and faculty rights and responsibilities, and possibly to curb future litigation, the federal government has made a move to clarify several guidelines concerning women, minorities and the handicapped.
Secretary of Education Terrel Bell requested last month that the Justice Department approve a new interpretation of several federal regulations, including Title IX, Title VII and the 504 guidelines affecting the handicapped. The changes, if approved, could substantially decrease university accountability to federal civil rights agencies.
According to Grier and others, the federal government's proposed re-evaluation of civil rights legislation probably will have little impact on reducing university litigation.
high ground.
"We have become a litigious society; we no settle our disputes in the courts instead of it in ternally." Grier said.
EABL RICHARDSON/Kannan Staff
Taking the field
Preparing for the Jayhawk's home opener, Facility Operations workers Harvey Boyd, left, and Roy Johnston, both of Lawrence, give the Jayhawk in the center of Memorial Stadium a new coat of red and blue paint. The Jayhawk is painted before each game and takes about two hours to complete the job.
Authorities call off search for convicts
By United Press International
AURORA, Mo. – Frustrated, weary law officers yesterday called off a two-day manhunt in the Ozark thickets of southwest Missouri for the abduction of four uniformed police, said were “deeper-secure to do nothing.”
David Tatum, the Lawrence County sheriff,
said that although he feared the fugitives might still be "holed up somewhere," officers had exhausted every lead.
"We feel we've done basically everything we can," he said. We have officers who haven't had time to work.
"All the state troopers have been sent back. We are going to call it quits."
Authorities from two states, seven counties and several local police departments were involved in the hunt for the three fugitives, the last of whom was a student from the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing.
The three men had left a trail of burglaries, stolen cars and kidnappings across two states. At the prison where they worked at the prison during the escape and a Bonner Spring policeman wounded while in pursuit.
The terror caused by the fugitives-two of
them convicted murderers and the third a convicted rapist—prompted many southwest Missouri residents to carry guns to work and leave them loaded by their bedside at night.
"It's gotten so bad that men whose widowed mothers live alone are picking them up and taking them out," said Bill Darby, a Marionville, Mo., grocer.
The convicts are Everett Cameron, 32, a habitual criminal serving a life sentence for rapoo, sedom and kidnapping; Robert Bentley, 28, convicted of second-degree murder and John Kitchell, 28, convicted of second-degree murder and assault.
Shankel releases study on athletics, academics
By SHARON APPELBAUM
Staff Reporter
Former acting chancellor Del Shankl presented a long-awaited report on athletics and academic standards at this morning's University Senate executive committee meeting.
"Our question is whether we're providing the right academic advice to athletes," Shankel, professor of microbiology and biochemistry, said yesterday.
The report, which was not available for publication today, represents a year of work by a special committee last year to study the issue. It includes recommendations for recruitment, advising, academic standards and a complaint procedure.
Joining Shankel in his presentation were Bob Marcum, athletic director, and the committee's chairman, Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs.
The administration has already approved the report.
"All the recommendations were acceptable with Chancellor Budig," Shankel said.
with Chancellor Doug, Shanker said.
Tacha said she also approved the plan.
"I was pleased with the cooperation between the athletic and academic sectors," Tchaa said. She said that Marcum attended several committee meetings and "was very supportive."
The committee was formed last fall after the Pacific 10 Conference violated rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Shankel said.
"They got into some messes," he said. "Students were getting credit for courses they didn't take; there was trouble with the junior colleges."
Shankel said Rafal Christoffersen, who was then vice chancellor for academic affairs, apologized.
University of Kansas wasn't having similar troubles.
Last spring, the Kansas City Times and the Kansan reported alleged violations of NGA run
The newspapers stated, among other allegations, that the game takes takeoffs and put athletics before education.
Shankel said those reports had nothing to do with the formation of the committee.
"The committee was formed long before those reports," he said.
"The focus of the committee was not to investigate the allegations. We're not an investigative agency. The (Big Eight) Conference and the NCAA can answer those questions."
"We just want to make sure we're doing what we need to do to offer good programs for wlcw."
Tacha said Christofferen originally appointed the committee "to constructively make certain athletes were getting a high quality academic program."
She said Shankel later wanted the committee to see if athletes were treated differently than in sports.
"The University was well represented," Tacha said.
The committee is composed of officials from academics and athletics.
Committee members were Tacha; Del Brinkman, Big Eight faculty representative to the NCAA and dean of the School of Journalism; Gil Dyk, dean of admissions and records; Mike Fisher, academic counselor for the athletic department; Stephen Goldman, coordinator of dividing for College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; and Robert Colseli, dean of Continuing Education.
Shankel said Budig asked him to help present the report because he was acting chancellor.
Skywarn members awarded for reporting tornado quickly
Bv LILLIAN DAVIS
Staff Reporter
With shattered windshield glass in both eyes, his arms and face, Phil Rankin grabbed the CB microphone he had been broadcasting on only moments before and began telling fellow Skywarm volunteers to sound the emergency sirens.
From the debris strewn around his tumbled car, Rankin knew he had been hit by a tornado.
"When I saw the ground debris pattern and the top half of a tree, that had been swaying in the wind, go straight up, I knew it was a tornado," he recalled. "I went to the campus at the University of Kansas, said yesterday."
Yesterday, Rankin and Marion Belcher, the assistant director of the volunteer emergency preparedness group Skywarn, received National Weather Service awards for the part each of them played in warning Lawrence of the June 19 tornado.
THE TORNADO KILLED one man,
demolished the Gaslight Village mobile home
park and tie the roof off a K-Mart store, both at
31st and Iowa streets.
Rankin, a member of Skywarn, said that the storm caught him completely by surprise.
He said he had been driving northwest on Lawrence Avenue monitoring the storm that had
"There had been no thought in my mind that there would be a tornado," Rankin said. "It was a terrible storm."
blown into the Lawrence area when a violent wind unexpectedly came out of the southwest.
Rankin has not regained vision in his right eye and is still recovering from other severe eye lacerations he received when the tornado flipped his car at Lawrence Avenue and Lockridge.
Belcher, the first volunteer to reach Rankin's side, continued broadcasting weather conditions and made arrangements to get Rankin to the Lawrence Memorial Hospital.
He said he did not have time to be scared, but instead, picked up the CB mike and began singing.
During the presentation, Rankin said he only wished they had been able to warn the public
"It was really hectic out there for awhile," Belcher said.
PHIL. SHIDELER, National Weather Service meteorologist, said the two volunteers' quick response was essential.
in the tornado's aftermath, Skywarn volunteers were asked by the Lawrence police to assist at the trailer park.
In a letter written to Rankin, the National Weather Service said that without spotters in the field it would have been difficult to give the city any warning of the severe weather conditions.
Weather
It will be partly cloudy today with a high in the upper 80s, according to the Weather Channel.
Tomorrow will be sunny with a high in the mid 80s.
Tonight will be cool with a low in the mid 50s. Gusty winds will blow from the south.
Nuclear center ready for disaster
Rv JOE REBEIN
Staff Reporter
The police set up roadblocks as residents are evacuated. Firemen and scientists in protective suits patrol the area, their Geiger counters probing for radiation.
"We have divided possible disasters into two types and severities," Benjamin Friesen, professor of biochemistry and radiation safety officer at the reactor, said yesterday. "We can now form a formal hitting the reactor center. The other is any type of disaster we can imagine."
A replay from the Three-Mile Island disaster? No, it's a scenario depicting the planned response to a possible nuclear accident at KU's Nuclear Reactor Center.
BORGREENSPAN/Kansas Stafl
BOB GREENSPAKmanen ban
Professor Benjamin Briesen
"We have prepared for both of them."
Friesen said KU's reactor was a training reactor, which produced 10 kilowatts per hour compared to a typical power reactor with a capacity for 1,000 megawatts per hour, or about 10,000 times smaller than a typical reactor.
FRIESEN OUTLINED KU's planned emergency procedures during yesterday morning's Douglas County Emergency Preparedness Agency meeting.
The DCEPA coordinates the fire department, police department, hospitals and other agencies that would be needed during emergency situations.
"Actually, there is no real way we could have a disaster that would let radiation damage crops."
Friesen said a tornado possibly could knock down the walls of the Nuclear Reactor Center and not damage the core of the reactor, which is behind 15 feet of concrete.
He downplayed the danger of having a reactor on campus.
"Even if the control roda were yanked out simultaneously, which is likely radiation damage, it wouldn't affect the performance."
"We have a capacity to control up to 50 rems per hour, and this type of accident would only cause radiation burns for a few seconds at a time."
If a radiation alert happened, KU police
IF THE RADIATION exceeds 200 millirotegens per hour, the radiation alert would go into effect, with a 50-meter area—just to the edges of Jayawater Towers and P1 Beta Phi sorority on 15th St.—evacuated, Friessen said.
Both rem and roentgen are quantities used to measure radiation. If a man is exposed to 100 roentgens or rems of radiation, he receives some radiation damage, but if he is exposed to 500 roentgens or rems, he will usually die.
would be notified first, then the fire department. Reactor officials and trained firemen would use Geiger counters to monitor the area for possible radiation leaks.
Friesen said officials at the Emergency Preparedness Agency also had the evacuation plans. He said reactor personnel should be trained how to use the radiation measuring equipment.
Bob Newton, director of DCEPA, said it was important to coordinate emergency and
"All of that stuff on papers doesn't do anybody any good if agencies don't know where to find them."
"I am impressed with the apparent minimal risk the reactor poses to the community. Professor Friesen has told us a better story than we expected."
FRIESEN SAID a full-dress rehearsal for evacuation procedures was possible if the emergency preparedness agencies requested it.
"Even though we have a set of emergency procedures, we like to tie in with the preparedness agencies," he said. "The recent floods are ready to be ready for any disaster before it occurs."
When questioned whether the reactor needed safety procedures for disposing nuclear wastes, Friesen said it was not a problem at the KU reactor.
"We are using the same fuel that arrived at the plant in 1803, and we don't project refinery costs."
*However, when we do decommission the reactor, the fuel elements would have to be removed.*
Friesen said a date had not been set to discontinue use of the reactor.
He said the 16 fuel elements were periodically checked for possible problems.
"We also have two spare fuel elements, which are protected by an intrusion alarm system that is connected to the KU Police Department and monitored at all times."