The University Daily
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
KANSAN
Tuesday, April 20, 1982 Vol.92, No.136 USPS 650-640
Med Center missing funds
By TOM HUTTON Staff Reporter
KANSAS CITY, Kan.—The Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the Kansas Attorney General's Office are investigating a possible misappropriation of funds at the University of Kansas Medical Center, Keith Nichter, KU director of business affairs, said last night.
A Kansas City, Mp., television station reported last night that the missing funds totaled nearly $300,000. Med Center officials, though never on a mountain, said the $300,000 figure was exaggerated.
Nitcher said only, "I'm not privileged to disclose that information at this time."
"It's way high," Tom Gleason, associate director of business affairs at the Med Center, said. "I don't know where that figure came from."
The shortage of funds was discovered in the management business office during a routine audit. Nitteja said.
The auditing staff found several irregularities, and the Board awarded the funding to KU policies at the Med Center.
"This was a routine audit of certain activities," Jack Pearson, director of police, said last night. "Coarse irregularities in deposits were found and security was not notified."
David Waxman, executive vice chancellor at the Med Center, and Charles Hartmann, vice chancellor for clinical affairs, both held positions but deferred comment to business officials.
Pearson said that forwarding the findings of his force's investigation to the KBI was standard procedure. "We don't want them to be
Chancellor Gene A. Budig and Attorney General Robert Stephan were unavailable for comment last night. Richard von Ende, executive secretary of the University, refused
It is not known how long the investigation will continue.
Weather
Today will be cloudy and cool with a high in the mid-40s. The winds will be from the northwest at 15 to 20 mph. Tonight's temperature will be in the low to the
Tomorrow will be sunny and not quite as cold with a high in the low to mid-
Students hurry in class in Weese Hall mass these familiar arrows on the fourth floor each day. Many students also stop in the ball for a study break.
Wescoe's old controversy, debts fade
By ANNE CALOVICH
Staff Reporter
They call it it the catacombs, those who live by day in the city. You know they use unplanned care to get youallowed up down the street.
Some students never see the inside of it,
because they so busy soaking up the sun on
the beach and freezing.
Those in the Wescote classrooms interrupt their teachers with laughter as a preacher's wailing or a radio's blaring disrupts the class from outside the windows that do not open.
Wecoce can be paid off formally Sept. 1 of each year. Keith Nitcher, director of business affairs,
Wescow, home of all those prerequisites, is about to be paid for quietly, not with any of the furry that accompanied it in 1970, when students objected to having their fees pay for it.
Richard von Ende, executive secretary of the University remembers 1970, when he was a graduate student at KU, and vice chairman of the University Senate executive committee.
AT THAT TIME, Wescoe Hall was going to be 25 stories high, with two five-story wings. It was supposed to be the main classroom and faculty office building on campus, in the center of campus, housing not only the humanities, but all facilities of core education.
The construction was estimated at $13 million.
"Unfortunately, the money appropriated by the legislature was only about $6 million," von Ende said. "So the architect卸掉了 ten stories, with a little redesigning, and it came out to
be about $ million, which was still more than the Legislature had allowed."
Two years, then three years, passed as Wescoe Holt sat waiting for a decision where either he or her would be named.
"The Legislature got to the point where they said, take the money or leave it," von Ende said. "At this time inflation was really increasing—by about 3 percent, and everything else about 9 percent."
"The architects were told to kill all over again. It was then another year, and inflation had taken its toll—the final estimate was $8 million. We said, "We lost all that space, and we haven't reduced the cost at all. We have to come up with funds some place or scrap it."
BUT THE Vietnam War was on, and students were not in love with the government.
"Lots of students felt negatively toward the government because of Vietnam and some of them were in Student Senate roles," he said. "It was very important for us to govern the government as well as this specific issue."
After a long debate, the Student Senate voted 36-31 to approve the use of student fees to pay for the part of Wescoe the state government could not
David Miller, then a candidate for student body president and now a state representative, opposed it, and circulated petitions to get the question on a referendum ballot for students to consider at the same time they voted in the student body vote. But Wescoe saw the need for Wescoe Hall. The petitions had been circulated too late to make the referendum ballot.
"I remember it finally came down to the student exercise council to uphold it, and they wrote it." — Edgar F. Enderle
Then-Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers sent it to the Board of Regens, who颁发了 $1.8 million in compensation.
WESCOE ENDED up costing $7,680,519.
Federal funds paid for $1,919,149 of it,
and $1,469,470 came from the state. KU students have
the cost of the cost, at a rate of $4.30 each
a semester.
Payment on the bonds began March 1, 1975,
and the side bond was scheduled to be paid
until October 31, 1986.
But the debt will be paid off essentially 10 years ahead of schedule, due to unforeseen enrollment increases, and interest collected on bonds bought with extra revenue from student fees which were required as security along with regular payments on revenue bonds.
KU STUDENTS also are paying for $1 million in revenue bonds on the University of Kansas Medical Center library. They also pay for the university's medical services, filling its additions and the health services facilities.
The bonds on Walkins Hospital are to be relied this year as well.
Other students at Kansas universities want to nav for buildings.
**Fort Hays State University students are paying approximately a $2 fee for a college that is being built at their request. Students at Fort Hays State University own their own initiative for a student recreation center.**
A bill was introduced into the Legislature in
1981 that would have prohibited the payment of buildings by student fees, but it died.
THE ISSUE came up again Friday at the Kansas Board of Regents meeting. A committee including Chancellor Gene A. Budig and Student Body President David Adkins asked that students not be expected to pay for buildings as part of their educational expenses.
The Regents will discuss it again in May, and the Legislature is studying a bill that would require non-binding referendums from students on any such issues.
Adkins said he thought the possibility of students paying for buildings became more real because they were moving to a suburban area.
But von Ende said he did not see a trend of students paying for many projects in the future.
"It could occur, but I think it's something people don't expect to occur—unless it's in some isolated instance or students provide the initiative for it."
BUDIG SAID under ordinary conditions, he would not favor levying student fees to pay for building projects.
"I fact, I'pleased that we have been able off the bonds on Westcott Hall and cancel that study at Westcott Hall."
"However, if it were a question of the academic quality of a program and the state were unable to fund needed facilities, I would be willing to consider a package that included a package if that were the only way to provide a facility needed for the education of our students."
Legal questions kill mind-control bill
By COLLEEN CACY
Staff Reporter
A bill that would legalize deprogramming of religious cult members, after sailing through the Kansas House and causing a rift with the governor, finally agreed, at least for this legislative session.
Lawmakers decided the bill involved too many tricky constitutional questions for them to deal with, and probably would not have been workable in its present form, according to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill would allow a judge to grant 30-day temporary guardianships to parents of religious cult members shown to be under "mind control." Although the bill never specifically mentions the word "cult," it says that to be considered under mind control, a person must be a capable of marking out the boundaries and be affected by "a system of coercive persuasion" by a group that uses misrepresentation or fraud to lure new members.
THE COMMITTEE took no action on the bill, but recommended that the Judicial Council, a panel of judges, legislators and business owners, hold the legislation and the problems it involves.
Parents whose children have joined religious cults supported the bill as a way to legalize the deprogramming of members. Now, if parents want to take their child from a religious group, they risk charges of kidnapping and lawsuits.
"Anyone who hears the testimony of those "parent" hat to we sympathetic." Sen. Jane Lane wrote on Wednesday.
But she said the committee questioned whether the bill violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.
Eldredge is vice chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
SEN. RON HEIN, R-Topeka, also a member of the committee, said the Legislature did not have the time or the ability to give the issue the full consideration
"The bill had serious constitutional problems, involving freedom of religion and the extent to which a person has control of his own mind," he said yesterday. "We're not equipped to deal with that in the Legislature. The Judicial Council has access to law clerks and judges. They can get at the kind of indent study it needs."
Eidridge said the committee also hesitated to take action on the bill because it would cost taxpayers.
The Judicial Council is planning to reexamine those laws soon, and the committee asked that it look at the mind-control bill in conjunction with that study.
"In any case, it's been a long time since there's been a look at the guardianship and conservatorship laws," Elidrige said. "We'd like to wait with before we start changing those laws."
KANAS SUPREME Justice Dr. David Prager, the head of the Judicial Council, said it had recently appointed a committee to begin studying those laws, but it had not met yet.
He said the committee would study the mind-control bill along with other related issues and make a recommendation to a legislative interim committee.
"By the next Legislature, they ought to have a report to make," he said.
Hein said he had no doubt that if the bill had passed the Legislature, it would have been
"It's an emotional issue. People had their minds waved by what they wanted to see done," he said. "That's the nice thing about having two houses in the Legislature. When one acts a little too hardy, the other can stop and say, 'Wait a time.'"
When the bill was first introduced, Rep. Nina Strahm, R-Sabethe, asked attorney
Rahm, R-Sabeth, asked Attorney
See CULTS page 5
Commission says water plant did not hide bacteria findings
By STEPHEN BLAIR
Staff Reporter
Lawrence city commissioners said last night that they were satisfied city water plant officials did not attempt to cover up a 1979 finding of bacteria in two city water samples.
Commissioners also said they were satisfied discrepancies between the original versions of some city ordinances and the final city code had not resulted from intentional changes.
Both of these issues were raised in the City Commission's evaluation of City Manager Burford Watson in February and were discussed at a commission study session yesterday in City
The commission yesterday listened to two superiors of former water department lab
And N. Jack Burris, director of the Bureau of Water Supply in Topeka, said recently that the
She also alleged harassment by plant officials, who she said blamed her for contaminating the
However, state records showed that K.T. Joseph, city chemist, took further samples at the two Lawrence laundries where the contaminated samples were found.
FROST HAD alleged that her superiors did not adequately investigate a possibility that the city's water could be contaminated even though both two samples in 1979 that contained land.
coliform bacteria in the samples did not cause disease and that the bacteria level was within the range.
All five commissioners said that they were satisfied the city's water was safe.
Concerning Frost's charges of harassment, Mayor Marci Marco Francisco said Frost should have filed a complaint as part of the city's employee grievance procedure.
CITY COMMISSIONER Barkley Clark agreed.
"It was clear from the statements she made that she'd found another job," he said. "The sense that I got was that the job she preferred."
In February the commission directed Watson to investigate the matter.
But Watson was investigating water quality,
not the basement cheese. Ergenooss said.
Frost said yesterday that no one from the city staff had contacted her.
Concerning the city code, the corrected version will have to be repassed by the commission.
Jim Kaup, lawyer for the League of Kansas Municipalities, which prepared the code, said only a few minor corrections remained to be made.
However, Kaup said he would write a letter to the commission reconstructing how the errors occurred, what the differences were between the two groups of data and prevent such errors from happening in the future.
See INVESTIGATIONS page 5