The University Daily
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Thursday, April 22, 1982 Vol. 92, No. 138 USPS 650-640
Endowment Association urged to help students with scholarship money
By COLLEEN CACY Staff Reporter
In the face of proposed federal cuts in student financial aid, the Kansas University Endowment Association should consider helping KU students with more scholarship money, State Sen. Ron Johnson, said on Thursday.
Then was one of a panel at the Kansas Union that discussed the impact of President Reagan's budget cuts on higher education and possible alternative sources of money.
Other members of the panel, sponsored by the Student Senate, were Mark Tallman, executive director of the Associated Students of Kansas, and Torn Berger, chairman of the Student Senate Finance and Auditing Committee. David Adkins, body president, moderated the discussion.
"Perhaps it's time for the administration and the Endowment Association to turn to providing more money for scholarships," Hein said. "Over the years, I've been a part of a lot of monument building, if you will."
He said the state could provide money for new buildings at universities from the educational system, he said.
Jerry Rogers, KU director of financial aid, who was also on the panel, said most scholarships from the Endowment Association were funded through the U.S. Carnegie achievement, regardless of financial need.
"Maybe the University needs to direct some money into educational grants," he said. "I'm not sure if I can."
“It’s difficult to justify a grant going to a student with no experience of overage when a student with a higher grade is involved.”
ROGERS SAID KU's federal financial aid would probably be down by about $250,000 next
He said the National Direct Student Loan program would receive no new funds next year, but because of current loans being reimbursed, there would be no cuts in the program next year.
But he said the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program would be cut, and students applying for Guaranteed Student Loans would first have to take a financial need analysis test, if their family income was more than $30,000 a year.
Rogers said the financial aid office also aftereft from administrative problems, because of its remote location.
"The government never seems to get its act together by the time school starts, he said.
As a result, he said, some students would be disappointed in the fall when their financial aid was cut.
Hein said he did not think Reagan's proposals, which call for cutting student aid from $3.5 billion in 1981 to $1.4 billion in 1984, would pass Congress intact.
"The truth lies somewhere between what the organized students want and what Reagan wants," he said. "Congress, I would hope, would be a little more responsible."
But he said students might have to get used to naving higher tuition.
"How much is a college education worth to you?" he asked the group of about 20 students.
you? he asked the group of about 25 students.
He used tuition paid to pay for about 25 percent of university costs, but in the past few years, it had dropped to about 18 percent.
But under a 20 percent tuition increase proposed by the Board of Regents this month, KU students would be paying close to the 25 percent cost of a diploma and pay about 22 percent of the University's costs.
The Regents will take final action on the increase in May.
Hein said the Legislature needed to work with the Regents and the universities to come up with a plan for education.
Tallman said that if students wanted to make an impact on the government's decision, there would have to be more leadership and organization than in the past.
"The big problem is that often, students show surprisingly little interest in this whole affair,"
KU affirmative action to use new tools to monitor hiring
Staff Reporter
By JANET MURPHY
KU's affirmative action program has a new tool to help it better oversee the hiring practices of the University of Kansas.
Affected classes are women, minorities, handicapped people and veterans.
The Workforce Analysis and the Goals and Timetables, completed in mid-February, will be excellent tools to measure the success of hiring professionals, directors of affirmative action, said recently.
This is the first time this report has been done at the University. Edwards said it was part of a compliance review that was being done by the U.S. Department of Labor Programs of the U.S. Department of Labor.
The compliance review is still in process with results due probably this summer.
The report, which took more than a year to compile, is based on employment figures for
fiscal year 1981, which ran from July 1980 to June 1981.
Edwards said the program was set up for yearly updates and those updates would reflect the changes. He said an update was already in progress, but the staff was as of November 1981, and should be out shortly.
Affirmative action is not involved in the actual hiring of an individual. Edwards said.
EDWARDS SAID the office could suggest new and special efforts to attract women and minorities, such as better places to advertise jobs.
"Affirmative action can't do anything as an office but monitor hiring and make sure the job is filled."
"In the final analysis, the departments make the hiring decisions," he said.
"Until recently, women and minorities have not been in the pools and have had not the op-
pose to swim."
Without creating new jobs, he said, they try to help find the best qualified person for the job.
See AFFIRMATIVE page 5
This plaque above the fireplace in the main hallway of the Sigma Nu fraternity marks the spot where 17-year-old Virginia Rackham-Stubbs supposedly was buried after she died of strangulation April 22, 1911. According to local legend, Rackham-Stubbs, the adopted step-daughter of then-Gov. Roscoe Stubbs, was hung in the house. At the time, the house was Stubbs' residence. Fraternity residents have reported mysterious events in the room on the anniversary of her death.
Ghost 'appears' at Sigma Nu house
Unsolved murder victim lingers
By ANN LOWRY Staff Reporter
Kansas Gov. Roscoe Stubbs returned home to Lawrence from three days in Topeka.
Whe he reached the third floor ballroom, he found his 17-year-old assistant, Virginia Rockham-Stubbs, hanging by a rope from the rafters.
He ventured through his silent house at a hill, searching for his wife and his young assistant, whom he had adopted as a step-daughter.
Or so the several members of the Sigma Nu fraternity, which bought the house in 1922.
The members also say her ghost comes back to visit this time every year.
He said her death certificate in her home Pittsburgh, showed that she died by strangulation.
Keith Sevede, a Kansas City, Kan., law student and Sigma Nu alumnus who has researched the hanging, said, "Virginia Ann Rackham died in that house on or near-Sevede-1219."
HOWEVER, DOUGLAS County authorities have no record of her burial, "a curious oversight by Douglas County records," Sevede said.
From these details, or circumstantial evidence, as Sevede calls it, Sigma Nus living in the house during the last 60 years have told stories of the ghost, Virginia.
Sigma Nu legend has it that she is buried within a large fireplace on the first floor of the house, upon which is a plaque, dated April 22, 1843, of strife shut out, the world of love shut in."
"I have 58 people who have related to me allegedly firsthand experiences," Sevedge told the newspaper.
if evaluated by their stations in life. We're talking big public and political figures."
He said the stories alumni had told him, dating back to 1929, concurred. All said they heard the voices of two women, one hysterical, and a cacophony of footsteps.
Sevegede said that two men living in the house during spring of 1977 were standing on the second floor landing and heard the voices of two women and footsteps coming down the street.
"It really spooked them. There was no one there."
The voice of the other woman, Sevédek said, would seem to be the governor's wife, who allegedly was found sitting on the roof of the house in a cataatite state the night of the attack.
Severede said Virginia must have been hung by someone else, because medical authorities told him that if a person hung himself, it would break his neck.
SEVEDGE SAID the governor's wife did spend time in a mental institution.
Other residents of the house have their own stories about the spirits.
Jim Hinkle, Prairie Village senior, said that about four or five years ago, a Sigma Nu and his date were in the Sigma Nu's room where the ballroom used to be and saw a ghost.
"She bit him real fast and said, with a white scared look on her face, 'Let's get out of here.'"
"She said she'd seen a figure of a lady just sitting there, and she'd never heard the story
Doug Holiday, Lake Quivira sophomore, said he was up late studying recently with all but one light off in his room and he got spooked.
"She was there. She was behind me," he said. "I kept hearing a clicking sound.
"I could have sworn someone was watching me."
While the presence of the spirits is not easy to substantiate, the presence of the body seems likely, according to facts Sevedge gathered.
"It was originally a Dutch fireplace open to
the staircase, but it would also open to what
was the first floor."
He said the masonry records were not specific, but that workers for the Bowersock family, owners of the Lawrence mill, did the job of closing one side.
The plaque on the fireplace is marked with the Bowersock symbol and the April 1911 date.
Sevidge's father, a casket manufacturer, saw the plaque while visiting his son.
He said that it was a monument used on cromatary utensils with wooden bases or family
Sevedge said an old Scottsman, a "monument affectioned," looked at the plaque and said it was unique, and he also was known that it was the type used on monuments.
Around the rim is a ridge of trim which is textured in an antiquing fashion, Sevedge
But at the bottom of the plaque is an insert of smooth brass through which there are
THEY ARE the type of screws, he said,
which would be used to engrave a separate
plate stating, "Here lies daughter Virginia,
born . . ."
"It itts together too well in that regard," Sevede said.
"It strikes me as putting a neon arrow up saying, 'She's here, come get her.' "Sevedge
"Society has a kind of ghoulish habit for wanting to know where the remains are."
Students make death runs, study at mortuary jobs
By ANNE CALOVICH Staff Represent
Staff Reporter
They are asleep upstairs in the darkened mortuary. The bright white lights that usually blind anyone outside of the big, white house are out. The old house creaks, but all else is silent.
Jerry Bever gets in the hearse. As he drives through Lawrence, people give him all the leeway they need. They may peer into the cab, but then they get away. He arrives at the deathbed
Until the phone claps: once they jump, twice—one on them pulls on a coat and tie as if she would be sweeping down.
Someone else has died. He must pick up the body.
the big cities no longer have live-in help at funeral homes, Larry McElwain, one of the owners of Warren-McElwain Mortuary, said. Lawrence funeral homes carry on the tradition of having not only live-in help, but live-in student help.
help
Beaver, Winfield freshman, Bill Wright, Scott City law student, and Andy Beeves, Topea senior, find living and working in a funeral home an economical way to go to college.
The three KU students each make about $300 a month working and living in an apartment at Rumsey Funeral Home, 601 Indiana St. One of them is on call every night for funerals during the weekends. They study between callers who come to pay their respects and between phone calls and death runs at night.
"That's what makes it an ideal job for us," Bever said recently. "We can make money and build our business."
THE TV in the backroom is turned down so it is barely audible. Music in the parlor plays softly—
funeral music, the kind that makes one feel like sleeping.
Bever opens the door and ushers mourners in politely, stiffly, "Right this way." He extends an arm, he is always at his shoulder, as though he was being over grief if they did not feel his presence.
The three students have their own coffins picked out; they play haunting chords on the organ when no one is around. Scared to live in a mortuary? Nah.
"There's no fear of ghosts roaming around," Reeves said.
Bever said, "You'll find that when people come in and pay their respects, they'll tell you a little bit about the person, and by the time they come from here, you kind of know part of his life."
"You realize what the reality of everything is." Reva said. "You just set used to it."
is," Bevera said. "Someone says I'm your son. Someone tells Bevera and says, 'I just want you back.' I have just a month ago."
He listens quietly, says nothing. There is nothing he can say when he does not know the answer to a question.
"Or of a dead person," Wright added.
It all begins with the death call, when one of them must go to pick up the body. It is not often done by a child.
There are calls from family members sometimes, and those kinds of calls, shaking them out of sleep are the most painful part of the job for Wright.
"People die 24 hours a day," Reeves said.
**back'in a moncher.**
"Then you call likes like that," he says. "Some
The phone rings at 11 p.m. Reeves jumps. He is back in a moment.
THOSE PEOPLE are the ones who do not
understand what it's like to live in a funeral home.
"You would not believe the pizza people," Bevera said. "We have a hard time getting people to deliver pizza. Gus comes from New York, and he is a sid, door, peek around the corner and make a quick getaway."
The pizza always gets there, but once, "a girl drove around the block six times," Bever said. She said, quote, she was 'looking for the door,' but I didn't know . . .
But the three men who live in the funeral home now are not nervous.
"It's part of the whole stigma people have with death," Wright said. "I don't know what they think. This is just a special-type service, a business."
And, of course, there are the friends who are a bit out off by the funeral home at first.
“And then there are the jokes.” Bever added. “Is everything pretty dead around there? Are you bored stuff? What kind of music do you play? Grateful Dead?”
But there is no blasting of the stereo here. And friends had better keep their language clean.
But apparently there are many who would like to be in the students' position. Warren-McElwain placed an ad in the University Daily Kansan 19 years ago, offering housing and a salary in exchange for part-time work. Ninety students applied, McElwain said.
Oscar Rumsey, a former owner who brought Rumsey's to Lawrence in 1920, has employed him as a consultant.
"We've seen a lot of doctors and lawyers come through here," he said. "It makes a wonderful part-time job for them."
AL YOST, one of the current owners of
Rumsey's, is still enthusiastic about student emmoveles.
"They're great," he said, "and we've got three of the best boys we've ever had."
If the fear of the dead was ever present, it was short-lived.
Two of them live in the funeral home; one does not. Beaver worked at a funeral home in Winfield for three years before coming to KU, Wright had been a volunteer nurse with the Rivers have worked at Rumsey's for 1½ years.
One surprise was walking into a roomful of open caskets.
"When you first start working here, you're kind of apprehensive because you don't know everything."
"It is funny, people's perceptions," he said.
"It's a de-mystifying experience."
But Reeves remembers the time the tornado sirens went off last summer while a body lay in state. He ushered the family and friends to the hospital, where he left his lesery of some downstairs in the funeral home.
"For some reason, I don't equate a dead body with the supernatural, or the spirit of somebody," Wright said. "I think when someone dies, their spirit leaves them and, if anything, working around the funeral home, it's made me realize that more."
Hever goes back to bed, if he can sleep. He will not be haunted by nightmares, but the phone
"It's funny, people's perceptions," he said.
But when it comes time to go to work, reality abides. Death calls have to be answered immediately.
"It's reassuring for people to know someone will be there right away," Wright said. Whoever takes the phone then calls the embalmer on duty, whoever lives nearby, where the embalmer prepares it—right away.
Weather
it will be clear to partly cloudy today, warming to the mid-40s. Temperatures will continue to be warm today and Friday with the low Friday in the mid-40s and clear to partly cloudy.