Winners
At the Kansas Indoor Special Olympics-East in Lawrence this weekend, the only losers were those who weren't there to share in the joy. More than 900 athletes competed
for hundreds of ribbons and medals in bowling, roller skating and volleyball. But no one had to compete for hugs and smiles there were plenty to go around. See page 6.
Chilly
High, 30s. Low, teens Details on page 3.
The University Daily
KANSAN
Vol. 95 No. 68 (USPS 650-640)
Monday, December 3.1984
Accident brings early end to student's semester
By JOHN EGAN Staff Reporter
Michael Marconi's unmade bed remains cluttered with clothing. A St. Louis Cardinals football poster hangs on the wall near his desk.
But Marconi, Highland Park, III, freshman,
may not be returning this semester to his
history.
Marconi, 18, suffered serious head injuries early Thursday morning when he fell from the trunk of a moving car near Allen Field House. He was taken to the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., for later date his condition was listed as fair.
HE WAS MOVED from the Med Center's neurosurgery intensive care unit yesterday to a hospital in New York.
"We're hoping that he can leave this weekend." Joe Marconi said yesterday from
his room at a motel across the street from the Med Center.
Joe Marceli arrived in Kansas City just hours after the accident happened.
Michael McCarthy, O'Fallon, III., junior and Michael Marconi's roommate, said Marconi had been at the Pladium, a nightclub at 901 Mississippi St. with three friends Wednesday night. The same night, Naismith Hall sponsored a "drink and drown" special at the Pladium, which serves 3.2 percent beer.
Shortly after midnight, according to KU police reports, Marcom and his three friends were riding west in a car on Sunyside Avenue when the car's driver stopped at the stop sign at Naismith Drive and Sunyside Avenue. The driver of the car, a student, reported that Marconi then got out of the car and climbed onto its trunk.
THE DRIVE REPORTED that she then turned left onto Naismith Drive and travelled to the old carpark.
the trunk. The car had passed Allen Field House when a passenger noticed that Marcioni was no longer on the trunk. Marcioni looked into the interior, about 40 feet south of Fieldhouse Drives.
"They were out having a good time," McCarthy said yesterday, "and he thought it would be fun.
"Next thing they knew, he was off the car"
One of Marcel's friends, Marty Berman,
Highland Park, Ill., sophomore said. "He
went home from school after accidents to
accidents to happen until after they happen."
Marcini suffered a double fracture to his skull and a concussion, his father said. He was admitted to the hospital.
WHILE MARCON'S FRIENDS monitor his condition and prepare for final exams, McCarthy will be packing his roommate's belongings to ship them to Highland Park. Marconi's instructors have been informed that he won't be back.
"He's through for the semester," McCarthy said.
Berman said jokingly, "He'll do anything to get out of finals."
Joe Marconi said, "He can't take tests. His power of concentration is zilch."
McCarthy said he hoped his roommate would return to the University of Kansas next semester, but Marconi's father said he doubted his son would come back.
"We're going to play it by ear," he said. He said his son wouldn't fully recover for 30 to 40 minutes.
McCarthy said, "Everyone goes along with him. He's a fun guy. He's a really fun guy. He's a cool guy."
Marconi sleeps most of each day, his father
said. He awakens for a few minutes, then sleeps for about four hours. Doctors and nurses wake him periodically to ask him questions.
"He's making what they said is a very, very rapid recovery." Joe Marcomi said. The problem is he's seldom not with it and very often with it. "We're happy. We're just happy where he's at right now."
Berman said yesterday, "He looks a lot better today.
"He keeps saying he wants to get the hell out of there. He wants to get out. He wants to go home. He keeps saying, 'Take me back to Highland Park.'"
Nurses have put restraints on him, Joe Marconi said, because he has been restless.
"he wants to get up, he said. "he wants to be very active. It's a very difficult situation."
Renovations leave burger off the grill
"Michael's been very aggressive. He wants to leave. He wants to go home. That is what he does."
By JOHN HANNA Staff Reporter
A Kansas Union renovation will not include a commercial fast-food franchise, despite what one student cailed his "last political maneuver at KU."
The Union Memorial Board on Saturday approved an architectural program — a set of goals for its $5 million renovation — that included the addition of McDonald's Corp. or Burger King Corp.
Members of the board cited a recent report that said such a franchise might not be profitable for the Union and might endanger the Union's exemption from state property taxes. They also raised questions about the officials' ability to control such a franchise.
AT SATURDAY'S MEETING, Russ Pitacek, Washington, D.C., junior and a former student senator, presented a petition asking the board to include a fast-food franchise in its renovation plans. Between 2000 and 2003 600 students had signed the petition, he said.
Placeck started the petition last week, after two committees recommended that such a franchise not be included in renovation plans. The committee advised the board to do so for more than a year.
But after the board's meeting, Placek said the issue was dead.
"The Union Memorial Board has done what they thought was best for students, he said. "We've been a good team."
PLANS FOR THE renovation will include a "scramble system" for food service services. Under such a system, a restaurant has one kitchen for several areas serving different foods.
During an hour-long discussion of the matter, Janis Biehler, board chairman, read from the report by Alexander Grant & Co., a Kansas City, Mo., accounting firm.
The report was presented first on Monday to the board's Merchandising Policies and Practices Committee. This summer, the committee asked the firm to complete a study on the feasibility of having a fast-food franchise in the Union.
Jim Lint, director of the Union, said yesterday that the report had cost about
The board in April had told the committee to study the possibility of putting a fast-food franchise in the Union. Biehler is chairman of both the board and the committee.
AFTER REVIEWING THE report, the Merchandising, Policies and Practices Committee and the University's Renovation Committee on Monday said a fast-food franchise should not be included in renovation plans.
tion," Biehler said. "I feel it's a sound one. The report said, based on information from McDonald's officials, that within five years a McDonald's franchise could make between $50,000 and $1.15 million in gross sales annually. McDonald's would be willing to pay between 5 percent and 9 percent in gross sales for lease of space, the report said.
"I feel very good about the recommendation."
"Bobbie said." "I feel it's a sound one."
In the report, Alexander Grant & Co. also projected that other Union food services would lose money because of a fast food franchise and that within three years a
See BURGERS, p. 5, col. 4
Carlos Tunnermann, Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States, greets Mariano discussion in Woodruff Auditorium. The two spoke in the panel discussion that ena Fiallos, president of the Supreme Electoral Council of Nicaragua, before a panel ed Saturday's Conference on International Affairs.
Chris Magerl/KANSAN
By DAN HOWELL
Nicaraguan official says elections were fair
Staff Reporter
Bias and romanticism in the United States about Central America need to give way to respect and realism, speakers said Saturday at a KU conference on that region.
Mariano Faillon, president of Nicaragua's Supreme Electoral Council, said Nicaragua's Nov 4 election was fair and historic, and not a contested one. The administration only because the Sandinistas won.
Howard Wiarda, a university of Massachusetts professor of political science and lead consultant to a commission on Central American affairs, told The New York Times Latin American countries had different and
"For 1984, we in Nicaragua had the opportunity for the first time in our lives to go to Africa."
sometimes conflicting goals for the region that made work for peace hard.
"THAT MAKES OUR view of Central America more complex and less romantic, but perhaps it adds more realism," Wiarda said.
Fiailos and Wiarda were among seven speakers at the University of Kansas' fifth annual Conference on International Affairs
at the Kansas Union. The conference topic was "Contadora and the Prospects for Peace in Central America." The Contadora process is an initiative by Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Mexico to bring peace and better economic conditions to Central America.
See related story p. 9
Carlos Tunnermann, Nicaraguan ambas sador to the United States. also snorkel at the
conference. He said the United States was hampering peace efforts in Central America by undercutting peace proposals and flexing its military muscle in the region
The conference, presented by KU i. cooperation with Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum, drew about 375 people.
FIALLOWS SAMD NICARAGUANS, with the
fission pass awarded the United States t
league championship.
"The Reagan regime says, 'The only way we will believe the elections were fair is for your party to lose — and not just your party, but certain others too.' " he said.
He said he used the term "Reagan regime" because U.S. officials at a meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, always referred to the "Nixonage routine."
Faiths came directly to the KU conference from Cartagena, where an international
meeting began Thursday on the Contadora process.
Fluilla spoke at 4 p.m. instead of 10 a.m. as scheduled. Charles Stansifer, conference director, said bad flight connections in Fluilla to Fluila to miss a plane to Kansas City, Mo.
THE CHANGE FOLLOWED several changes in speakers recently. The conference lost representation by the Department of State and two keynote speakers, from Nicaragua and Colombia, in the past three weeks.
Fiaulos said most journalists and academic observers who had witnessed the Nicaraguan election dismissed or minimized allegations of unfairness. Several of the parties making the allegations refused to participate in the election.
See LATIN, p. 5, col. 1
Part-time instructors seek better conditions
Staff Reporter
By MICHAEL TOTTY
Like many part-time teachers, Low, a former lecturer in English at KU, took the Washburn position for the extra income it provided.
When Denise Low's Washburn University composition students evaluated her teaching last spring, they complained that she did not keep convenient office hours.
Part-time teachers across the country are a growing university minority. According to a recent report sponsored by the National Institute of Education, part-timers compose 41 percent of higher education teaching staffs, up from 23 percent in 1966.
The students did not realize that in addition to her Washburn class, Law also taught three courses.
KU HAS ABOUT 100 part-time positions and 1,300 full-time faculty members, according to the office of academic affairs. The part-time figures include professionals such as lawyers, doctors and engineers who teach only a class or two a semester and those like
Low, for whom part-time teaching is a main job.
Educators say the creation of this lower caste of teachers can reduce faculty involvement, shortchange the students and harm university morale.
And although some departments have attempted to alleviate the problems partimeters face, one administrator said recently that the University's efforts were "like making the plantation a little more comfortable for the slaves."
The administrator. Michael Johnson, chairman of the English department, said the burden placed on the department by large freshman and sophomore composition classes required it to rely on part-time teachers.
"ITS TYPICAL, ACROSS the nation," he said. "It literally the only way we can teach it."
But such flexibility has a price.
The NIE report said part-time teachers could not make the same commitment to a university that full-time faculty members could
Low said that teaching four classes at two
different schools "don't leave the time to do the job I knew I should be doing."
"You don't have as many conferences as you should." she said. "You don't do anything beyond classwork and grade papers."
The report recommended consolidating part-time positions into full-time positions in our minds, one full-time faculty member, one assessment team or three part-timers," the said report.
BUT AT KU. part-timers are a bargain,
a basket. Springer, director of
freshman athletics.
"When you worry about poverty-induced
"The University gets a lot more than it pays for with part-time teachers," he said. Some have Ph.D.s; most have M.A.S. They also have a lot of work, and they do it very well.
But the contradiction between lecturers' qualifications and their status is the source of their complaints. Low recently chose to quit her jobs at KU and Washburn for a full-time position at Haskell Indian Junior College she was the main reason she left KU, she said.
problems you can't possibly do as good a job as when you're relaxed," she said. "It's hard to keep your morale up when you make less, considerably less than the garbage man."
IN THE ENGLISH department, full professors normally teach four courses a year and make between $20,000 and $40,000. Lecturers teach two to six courses and are paid between $1,375 and $1,500 for each course. They also teach a year, depending on their graduate degrees.
Many lecturers supplement their income with other jobs. Sharon Oard Warner, who graduated from KU last spring, is teaching English part-time while her husband finishes his degree. She also works as writer-in residence for the Johnson County Park and Recreation District and writes book reviews for the Kansas City Star.
She said she did not mind her status as a part-timer as long as it was temporary. But she was concerned that only part-time students will be available after her bushland graduated.
"THERE'S NO FINANCIAL security and
See LECTURER, p. 5, col. 1