KANSAN
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
Friday, April 9, 1982
Vol. 9, No. 130 USPS 650-640
Regents budget approved
By COLLEEN CACY Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA-A—The 1982 Board of Regents budget, including a $900,000 faculty salary enrichment fund, was approved by the Kansas Legislature yesterday and is in its way to Gov. John Carlin's
The enrichment fund, which previously was killed in the House, received a shot in the arm with support from Speaker of the House Wendell Lady and Senate President Ross Doyen.
During a Wednesday afternoon bargaining session, members of the House and Senate Ways and Means committees decided to trim the fund from $1.5 million to $900,000. They recommended that the University of Kansas receive 28.9 percent of the funds, or about $270,000.
They also decided to designate the funds for faculty only in engineering, computer science and business. Faculty are leaving these areas for private industry. University administrators said.
"I think it's a tremendous step forward," Bob
talks it in a speech for the Kansas Engineering
Society, said veteran Edith Hoyle.
"It sets a precedent that the state has a responsibility to respond to market problems."
HARSOOK SAID he was hoping that 70 percent of the money would go to engineering faculty.
"Our review of the situation is that most of the faculty members impacted by this situation are not involved."
"It's a nationwide problem. We're probably one of the first states to deal with it."
Doyen, R-Concordia, who proposed the fund early in the session and pushed it through the committee.
"I just felt they needed some extra help," he said.
He said he'd been pushing for the fund all session and had convinced House members who
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Mike Hayden, R-Atwood, spoke out against the fund on the House floor, saying the state could not afford more money for faculty salaries.
BUT LADY, R-Overland Park, joined the movement for the extra salary money by appointing himself to the conference committee to pull for the fund.
Conference committees are formed to settle data between House and Senate budget recommendations.
Both chambers voted to accept the conference committee report yesterday. The enrichment fund was the only significant difference between the two budgets.
State Sen. Jane Eldredge, R-Lawrence, said she was worried that Democrats did not like the legislation redirecting
"Is this opening the door for law and business to come ask for their own enrichment money next year?" she asked. "This was a concession of the conference committee alone."
Hayden originally had suggested limiting the fund to the three high-demand areas because he said he wanted to make sure the money went where it was most needed.
The fund is in addition to a 7.5 percent faculty increase already approved by both chambers. The other Regents' budget items approved were the college's student salary increases and an 8.75 percent student salary increase.
SENATE WAYS and Means Committee Chairman Paul Hess, R-Wichita, said he agreed that the fund was setting "a dangerous precedent, but it is the will of the body."
The conference committee also removed two appropriations from KU's budget, but Bess said that it would be good to do so.
The omnibus bill is the last appropriations bill of the session and it includes money for all programs the Legislature has already approved, but not yet funded.
The two items left out of KU's budget were
$50,000 for the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing
$119,500 for the Bureau of Child
Research.
Both programs need the money because of cuts in federal grants next year.
HAYDEN SAID the Legislature was considering financing the Remote Sensing Program from the Geological Survey fund and was looking into the possibilities of funds for the Bureau of Child Research.
Hess said, "It's highly likely we will end up in the Remote Sending Program in the orphan girl."
The conference committee report also included $30,000 to establish a poison control hotline and hire one nurse at the KU Medical Center.
State Rep. Jessie Branson, D-Lawrence, which was approved on the floor of the House.
"So when your child gets poisoned in the middle of the night, you can call the poison control hotline, and they'll tell you what to do," Hess said.
Committee reports included a financing cut for the Med Center of $2,695,722 because of a reduction in the number of hospital beds to be staffed and operated there.
AS OF MARCH, the Med Center was operat- ing 464 patients of 664, partly because of a shortage of 200 nurses.
The Legislature also approved funding funds for 446 full-time positions from the hospital staff. However, 140 of those positions will be shifted from funding to funding by private practice corporations.
It will force clinics receiving a heavy dose of income from taxpayers - over 50 percent - to get help.
An updated patient billing system, financed by the 1981 Legislature, will allow the elimination of 33 positions. The total of 293 positions that were cut reflects the reduced number of hospital beds.
Sen. Nancy Kassebaum talks with members of the KU Committee on South Africa in front of the Kansas Union yesterday. Later that afternoon, Kassebaum, R-Kan., spoke to the American Association of University Professors.
JON HARDESTY/Kansan Staff
Gleason decides to abandon recall drive court challenge
Staff Reporter
By STEPHEN BLAIR
"I trust the people to recognize a raw power play when they see one," Gleason said.
Lawrence City Commissioner Tome Gleason said last night he has decided not to challenge in court the legality of the May 11 election to recall him.
Marnie Argersinger, former mayor and member of the Lawrence Committee, which organized the recall drive, said, "I'm glad to not going to take it to court. It would be messier."
Gleason said he was sure he would have won the case if he had challenged the election in court, but he wanted to prevent people from doubting that he was accountable to voters.
FRED PENCE, former mayor and member of the Lawrence Committee, said that Gleason
"Some people would claim. 'You are only here because you got a judge to prevent the people from getting into the building.'"
probably would not have won and was wise in declaring against a legal challenge.
"It was probably a smart thing to do," Pence said.
Gleason said the recall effort would not have withstood a court challenge because Kansas law required definite grounds for recalling an elected official.
"The statutory grounds for recall are
See related story page 7.
Universities must determine priorities, Kassebaum says
misconduct, incompetence or failure to perform "he said recently.
Last night he said, "I've talked to other attorneys, and more than one of them urged me to fight."
The recall resulted from a petition drive organized by the Lawrence Committee in response to Gleason's letter to City Manager Buford Watson in early February.
In his letter, Gleason asked Watson to resign or face the possibility of being fired.
during an evaluation by the city
see GLEASON page 5
See GLEASON page
Weather
Tomorrow will have decreasing cloudiness and a high in the 40s.
Tonight will be cloudy with a 35 percent chance of light snow flurries. The temperature will be cooler.
Today will be warmer, with a high in the mid-80s, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka. Winds will be from the northwest at 10 to 20 mph.
By ANNE CALOVICH
Nen. Nancy Kassebaum said yesterday that universities were as responsible for financing higher education as the federal government. Kassebaum addressed the KU branch of the American Association of University Professors at the Kansas Union.
Staff Reporter
"We can point to the federal government-it's a wonderful scapegoat," Kassbauen, R-Kan., said. "It behoves administrators, faculty and students, understand what they feel are priorities on campus."
Kassebaum said the question to be asked was how much the federal government should be involved in financing higher education. Although cuts are being threatened, she said, university self-evaluations would help the government determine what was really essential.
"The universities have a responsibility of letting into their own budgets to see what what's going on."
"As we look to educational needs in the future, it's not a question how much money, but where purpose goes."
"No one wants to give up what they already have had. But I think it can only strengthen higher education to take a longer look at what is important and how it is to be funded."
Cold temperatures did not keep these two ducks from preening their feathers in Potter Lake.
KASSEBAUM, who is a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said she favored retaining 1982 spending for 1983.
Kassebaum said she was not sure when, if ever, the 1983 budget would be settled, but said, 'I feel certain there will be a capping of discretionary funds to the '82 level.' Such discretionary funds include funds for higher education.
"I believe we should cap all spending to the 1982 level," she said. "Some say that's simplistic, but it seems equitable me. It's a way to make significant changes in the budget and
Regarding possible Reagan cuts for international studies, Kassebaum said she thought those funds would remain the same for next year, but that the Senate Appropriations Committee might redirect some of them to other areas.
"The more we can understand neighborring nations and other countries, the more exchange of students, the better off the world will be," she said.
KASSEBAUM ALSO said at the AAUP meeting that she favored the student loan backacks that went into effect this year, and which
See KASSEBAUM page 5
U.S. attempts Falklands negotiations
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Alexander Hajfle飞到 London early yesterday in an effort to mediate the growing crisis between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.
By United Press International
The United States, maintaining a neutral position in the dispute, is seeking a diplomatic solution in an attempt to head off a military clash between the US and Russia. The naval fleet steamed toward the contested islands.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Haig that Argentine troops must be withdrawn from the Falklands and British rule
restored before negotiations can begin on the future of the disrupted South Atlantic colony.
British officials said Thatatcher asked Haig to relay London's position when he travels to Argentina today on the second leg of a peace mission ordered by President Reagan.
ARGENTINA VOWED yesterday to defy a British blockade of the Falkland Islands and put on alert an estimated 50,000 reserve troops
The military junta reassured apprehensive patriots it had the might to hang on to the South Atlantic archipelago and rebaptained Britain's sea base in Argentina home. Argentina seized the British colony last Friday.
Naval officials said they were confident that Argentina could whip the British, who will be operating "way out of their theater of war" in the Philippines also enjoys air superiority, they said.
Although the United States is remaining neutral, it will let British planes use a U.S.-controlled airfield on a British island in the South Atlantic and refuel the planes if they land there en route to the Falkland Islands, the Pentagon said yesterday.
pentagon spokesman Henry Cato said no U.S. assistance beyond that was planned in connection with the British attempt to regain control of the Falklands.
See FALKLAND page 5
Computers help handicapped to cope
By DEBBIE DOUGLAS$
Staff Reporter
A man's best friend could be his computer.
For K.C. Huang, graduate student in mechanical engineering, the computer has been his closest working partner since the beginning of this academic year.
Huang and his computer have been redesigning a machine that can recognize faces by tilting it to feed themselves.
Huang said a computer helped him find the problem areas of the Beeson Feeder, analyze data.
"I changed everything," he said.
THE ANGLE at which the spoon formerly was held was too sharp, Huang said, and the spoon would catch on the edge of the food dish and flip the food.
"I used the computer to develop my own mechanical design," he said.
Huang said he made the switches, which turn the feeder machine on and off, easier to operate. He also worked to slow the speed at which the spoon would move, in order to serve the spoon and the angle of its holding arm.
"K.C. does most of the work, and the department just gives him moral support once in a while," Baer said.
IF HUANG can get the feeding machine to work more smoothly, he said, more people might buy it, and its cost could go down.
Charles Baer, professor of mechanical engineering, said that Huang spent hundreds of hours working with the computer, which he programmed to graphically draw better angles for the spoon and its holding arm.
"Now, only a dozen or so feeders are being sold each year," Baer said. "There are several thousand quadriplegics in the country, and we need more feeders, but we can't until we work better."
Paul Fortin, associate director of the University of Kansas Center for Research Inc., said the redesigned Beeson Feeder would cost the same as other feeding machines on the market, but he said, "It will be more functional and less frustrating for its users."
He said the machine would cost between $400 and $500.
New technology has made the use of the computer in mechanical design possible, Fortin
"The development at the University of computer-aided design, and also of computer-aided manufacturing, has the potential of bringing research area of great importance," he said.
HE SAID the work on the Beeson Feeder was the first step toward becoming the Midwestern leader in computer-assisted mechanical design and manufacturing.
Baa said that Huang had the most sophisticated knowledge of computer graphics
"He is pushing the state of the art, really," Beer said.
Huang said he hoped to have the Beeon Feeder redesigned and ooo built by the end of M6.
After this project, he said, he wants to continue
See EQUIPMENT page 8