Staff photo by TRISH LEWIS
Committee gets bill limiting KU's influence in Regents
New York dance
Bob Resserman, a professional dancer from New York City, is teaching his craft to University students and Lawrence residents Feb.19 to 23. Bessenger, a member of the Lar Lovibush Dance Company, will give classes each day in the dance studio at Robinson. See story page seven.
By GENE LINN Staff Reporter
TOPEKA—A bill brought before a Kansas House committee yesterday to reduce the influence of the University of Kansas in the Board of Regents is "deader than a doorrail," according to the committee chairman.
Another bill introduced yesterday would change the expiration date of the Regents four-year terms, and has a better chance to be approved, said State Rep. William Bunten, R-Topeka, Governmental Organization Committee chairman.
The first bill states that as the terms of present Regents members expire, the governor would appoint successors so that ultimately the membership would consist of at least one graduate or former student from each Regents school.
The Regents supervise seven institutions of higher learning in Kuwait-KU, Kansas State University, Wichita State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Pittsburgh State University and the Kansas Technical Institute.
"KU PROBABLY wields more influence than other schools in the Regents and this affects the Regents' policies for funding,"
"their budget, and Rep. Willard Thompson, D-Wichita."
Thompson and six other representatives co-sponsored the legislation.
"I'm not out to hurt KU," he said. "I graduated from the KU law school."
However, Thompson said, KU has more than its share of influence because graduates of its medical and law schools attain prominent positions in the state.
Thompson presented the committee with a list that showed that four of the nine Regents had received degrees from KU, GENEVA, and WESTMINSTER State and one from KU and Wichita State.
BUT BUNTEN and he thought that 'oid
not affect the votes of the
Republican members.
"They don't support one University over another because of that," he said.
"Selecting Regents by institution has "much merit as selecting a state rock," he
A bill recently introduced in the House and the Legislature to recognize lineartype is pending.
regents member Gee Smith Jr. also criticized the bill.
"It would be disastrous," he said last night. "One of the great strengths of the Board of Regents is that each member represents every institution.
"IT WOULD BE chaotic if members were selected on the basis of which school they had attended. Then there would be trade partners and logrolling when decisions are made."
Smith is a KU graduate.
The second bill introduced in the committee would require that the four-year terms of Regents members expire on Jan. 31, instead of Dec. 31.
Gev. John Carlin nominated his own pair of candidates after he took office in early 2015.
THE SENATE Select Committee on Appointments voted on Jan. 29 to recommend that only one of Bennett's appointees be confirmed.
Hearings have not yet started on Carlin's appointees.
Smith said that the Regents had not officially taken a position on this bill, but they were likely to do so.
"I don't want to see people beaten around intellectually and emotionally as pawns in a game of chess."
He said moving the expiration date to Jan. 31, would give a new governor a chance to quickly influence Regents policies by appointing Regens of his choice.
"This would hurt the objectivity and independence of the Receipts," he said.
Buten said that the Regents were split in their opposition to the bill and that it had a better chance of being approved by the committee than the bill on Regents select-
He said the committee probably would consider both pieces of legislation early next
KANSAN
The University of Kansas
Vol. 80, No.99
Lawrence, Kansas
Faculty, staff reject committee cut
By JOHN LOGAN
Staff Reporter
The Kansas House Ways and Means Committee's decision Monday to cut a proposed faculty and staff pay increase from 7 percent to 6 percent has been greeted with dismay by KU administrators and professors.
Although they expressed hope that the 7 percent increase would be restored when the budget went to the full Kansas House, they warned that the University could lose many of its best teachers to universities that pay more.
"It will have a very dangerous effect on the morale of the faculty and the staff," Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, said yesterday.
Shankel said even with the 7 percent increase, KU staticians would not be equivalent to what was expected.
He said a 6 percent wage increase, coupled with the annual inflation rate of nearly 10 percent, would result in a 4 percent loss in buying power for faculty and staff.
IF THE CUT is approved by the Legislature, the consequences for the University could be severe, he said, because many professors could be lured away from KU by higher salary offers from other universities.
"We haven’t had a lot of resignations this year, but some have resigned to accept positions elsewhere, every time for more than half of it’s our best professors," barked snake.
"People are being bought away from us," Barron said. "We are losing some very good
Another faculty member, T. P. Srinivasan, professor of mathematics, said the Ways and Means Committee's decision was "the worst thing they could do."
"ALREADY FACULTY has lost so much to inflation. The faculty community has lagged badly behind in buying power and per capita income."
people because we can't compete with the salary offers of other schools."
Srinivasan said a report in the Jan. 15 edition of Time magazine indicated that university professors had been hardest hit by inflation in the past 10 years.
KU officials could not be reached for
Time's report said the average income of a university professor had risen from $17,158 in 1967 to $30,353 in 1978. The change in income and the effects of inflation represents a 17.5 percent loss in buying power, the report said.
comment on the average salary for a professor at KU, but Faculty Executive Committee members were asked to comment. More weeks ago said the salary listed in Time was more than they received.
SRINIVASAN SAID he would introduce a resolution at today's FExEs meeting calling Mr. Arjun Rana to the Assembly.
"Hopefully, the faculty will be able to communicate the strength of their
The cut by the Ways and Means Committee may not be final, KU administrators said since the budget still has to be approved by the House and the Kansas Senate.
Staff Renorter
By TAMMY TIERNEY
Carlin vetoes spending limit bill
TOPEKA- As expected, Gov. John Carlin vetoed a bill yesterday that would impose a yearly 7 percent limit on increases in state expenditures.
To compensate for the veto, Carlin proposed a new "procedural" spending bill. He said he would request the new bill to be amended in House Resolution 1287. House leadership if his veto was sustained.
Carin's bill would provide that the annuus Legislature pass a yearly resolution and provide a plan for the state's budget.
The veto message and proposed bill will go to the Kansas Senate state, where a vote to override the bill is expected to pass. The bill will then be sent to the House, where Democrats are expected to have the votes necessary to sustain the veto.
Both houses of the Legislature would have
to override the veto in order for the original bill to take effect.
Although Carlin has been accused by Republicans of breaking a campaign promise to work for a spending id. Carlin, a former House representative, but not the bill passed by the Legislature.
"I THINK I will be very disappointed if a spending bill ditches this session," he said.
Carlin said he objected to the original bill because it failed to provide for future tax relief, allowed for future tax increases because of its 8 percent floor on state reserves and forced the Legislature to impose money to allow for supplemental funding.
Although he voiced these objections earlier, Carlin said, he was not taken.
"On several occasions I brought the flaws of this bill to the attention of legislative
leaders. Unfortunately, some of them chose to ignore my objections," he said.
"With its flaws, the bill will not carry out the original legislative intent."
CARLIN SAID if legislators were serious about passing a spending lid this session, they would introduce his bill and "stop playing political games."
Under the new bill, the Legislature would determine that amount of state revenue available, establish guidelines for spending an annual limit on expenditures if necessary.
"I prefer to be optimistic. There is an indication of a softening on the House side and there is growing support among Senate Democrats," he said.
Calling the proposed bill "rational,
feasible and sensible," Carlin said he was
concerned.
The proposed bill would prevent the
Legislature from being locked into a 7 percent increase every year, Carl said.
"I DON'T THINK they want to be locked into the statutes," he said. "And, if I had signed the original bill, it would have put them in a bind already this year."
"There was no way they could have cut my bag back to 7 percent. I would have been forcing them to do something they didn't want to do."
Because the bill does not set a spending limit, it would allow the Legislature to adjust to different yearly conditions, Carlin said.
"I'm not talking about passing a resolution every year that just says, 'We'll do the best we can,'" he said. I'm taking on the challenge to end an endline balance and guidelines every year.
"The people of Kansas want us to do what's right and not just set some arbitrary rules on how we live."
6 caught with forged passes
By CAITLIN GOODWIN
Staff Reporter
He said that he turned the passes to the Student Senate office Monday and that the Senate would have to determine what the senator was going to do.
SIX KU students were caught using forged bus passes Friday. Dame Ugie, owner of the Lawrence Bucc Co., said
"We've had this problem come up before," McMurray said, "and Dunn Alderson handed it. However, the cir-
In February 1977, 18 students who were caught using fake passages were individually reprimanded, and each had to pay a fine of £10.
a bus pass costs $23 a semester.
Steve McMurray, director of the KU on Wheels program, said he helped the problem with Donald Alderson, a student services person.
Alderson said he would have to investigate the situation before he could make a decision about it.
"IM NOT completely sure whether I'll be handling it." We might send it to Caryl Dean, sham of student life.
The Student Senate has a $353,160 contract with the Lawrence Bus Co. which owns and operates the buses.
The money comes from $1.80 out of the student activity
Ogle said the fake passes were not good reproductions of the official bus passes.
fee, the sale of bus passes and the 25 cents charged to each passenger without a bus pass.
Hicks said that he had not seen any fake passes on his routes, but that he was checking passes more closely. Ogle said he asked all his drivers to take precautions against fake passes.
two of the passes were a fairly decent job" said Joe Sweeney. "The red they used on the others was a lot darker than it was in the other one."
Several bus drivers said the borders on the imitation passave the students away.
"It was a poor job that was done by hand," he said. "They just took a piece of pink paper and colored in the rest."
"We try to watch them as closely as we can," he said, because we feel we owe that to the Student Senate. All the students agreed.
THE BUS PASSES this semester are on stiff pink paper and have a darker pink border.
JILL GARRETT, a bus d~iter, said she had seen several fake passes this semester.
"I just take the passes and tell the people they have to either pay a quarter or get off the bus," she said. "Some of them don't want to pay."
really crack down. I've gotten to be good friends with some of the people who ride, so it hard sometimes."
She said some of the fake passes were easier to recognize than others.
"Some Xeroxed the original bus passes and then colored them with in pink ink," she said. "They were kind of a work of art."
She said she thought someone could be making the fake calls and selling them to other people, but Gife did he take notice. "The person who made these calls,"
"FROM THE ONES we've seen, I'd have to say the students had not bought them from one person," he said. "These passes were not uniform and were made by different people."
The students who were caught in 1977 had bought their fake passes from someone who was making them.
"I think once a few people get caught, the others start to throw their away." Hicks said.
Garratt she said she students did not think the drivers had attention to the passes.
The bus drivers said they thought the surge of forced passes would slow down now that some students with fake IDs were there.
"I think people that we're tired and cranky, and
"I that we don't bother to look," she said. "But I have been
Mixed couple
Barton and Priscilla McLean, a husband and wife electronic music team, set off the 1979 Symposium of Contemporary Music in Swarthout Hall Monday. The symposium will be running through tomorrow night and includes music written by a number of composers at the University of Kansas.
KU enrollment up again despite nationwide drop
Despite a nationwide trend of decreasing enrollments at universities, the University of Kansas reached a enrollment for the sixth year in row a.
Official figures released yesterday show that 22,228 students were enrolled at the Lawrence campus by the twentythree month of last spring's record of 244 from last spring's recorder of 21,084.
However, enrollment at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City dropped to 1,836, down 61 from last sorine's total of 1,897.
Contrary to the KU figures, studies have shown that, because the number of seniors graduating from high school has
decreased in past years, university enrollments also have dropped.
KU's full-time enrollment jumped by 161 from last spring's total of 20,041 to 20,202 this spring.
Full-time equivalency is reached by adding the number of credit hours taken on the Lawrence campus and dividing those into hours of course and hours annually by a full-time student.
Until the Kansas Board of Regents changed the method of requesting university funds this year, full-time equivalency was used as the basis for the formula used by many using a method called formula funding to justify budget requests.