Glory days
Just when you thought it was safe to read the sports page, sports editor Greg Damman has unveiled to the breathlessly waiting world his list of the top 10 achievements in
the history of KU athletics. The competition was tough — the man on the left set world records in the mile run, but our fearless scribe rated him a mere fourth. See page 12.
Pleasant
High, 68. Low, 50 Details on page 3.
The University Daily
KANSAN
Vol. 95, No. 32 (USPS 650-640)
Tuesday, October 9, 1984
Endowment donates less to KU in '84
By BRENDA STOCKMAN Staff Reporter
University support from the Kansas University Endowment Association decreased for the first time in five years by about $1.4 million from fiscal year 1983 to fiscal year 1984, according to the Endowment's year-end report released last week.
The report showed a 6.6 percent decrease in University support in 1983-84 to 1982-83. The fiscal year for the University of Kansas runs from July 1 to June 30.
GEORGE E. STEWART, vice president for administrative services for the Endowment Association, said yesterday that University support declined in fiscal year 1984 because financial support from the State of Kansas had increased and the association was no longer contributing to three large building assets, which were completed in fiscal 1984.
The K.S. "Boots" Adams Alumni Center, the Summerfield Hall addition and the Learned Hall addition for the Interim Library were completed. Stewart sand
Marvin Burrs, Board of Regents associate director for budget, said the total general use budget for the University of Kansas, which includes money from the state general fund and student tuition, increased by about $4.5 million from fiscal year 1983 to fiscal year 1994.
Also, the Endowment Association wrote off
DESPITE THE DECREASE in total university support, the Endowment Association gave a record $4.2 million in scholarship aid to about 3,000 students in 1963 and year 1963, the Endowment Association gave about $4.1 million in scholarship aid
See ENDOWMENT, p. 5, col. 1
A student relaxes on a bench outside the Frank R. Burge Union.
By United Press International
The trouble limited Challenger's astronauts to only brief periods of contact with mission control as the shuttle passed over a few tracking stations scattered around the globe. Extra stations were activated, but one was scrapped last 77 minutes and another 62 minutes.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The crew of the 13th shuttle flight was hit by more bad luck yesterday when the radio relay satellite used by Challenger to send most of its communications and all of its radar pictures to Earth mysteriously shut down.
The satellite malfunctioned at about 7 a.m. Ground engineers were able to restore it to operation by about 10 p.m., after beaming up new computer instructions. Challenger's mission could have continued without the crew, but with the crew would have remained sparse.
The satellite, the world's largest orbital relay station, is in an orbit 20,000 miles
NASA SPOKESMAN BRIAN Welch said that the satellite's computer memory had been scrambled by "a burst of cosmic rays," but flight director John Cox said at a news conference late yesterday that it was too soon to determine exactly what had caused the failure.
"I don't have any idea in detail what happened to that satellite today," Cox said. "Whatever the upset was, nobody knows what caused it."
Despite the difficulty, Robert Cripton, Jon McBride, Sally Rise, Kathryn Sullivan, David Leestma, Marc Garmine and Paul Cox have played cartoons on the fourth day of their eight-day flight
THEY SET A NEW record of sorts when they turned in for the night at 7 p.m. The world's largest space crew said good night in unison.
"I'll bet you never heard that many voices
from space all at once in your career," Sullivan said.
Scientists said the communications blackout forced Challenger's powerful downward-looking radar to miss five high priority observation periods. It also delayed the transmission of radar images recorded on board the ship.
Engineers suspect a cosmic ray burst may have wiped out the satellite's computer memory. Engineers call such phenomena "single upset events," in which a high-speed particle hits part of the satellite's computer circuitry and upsets its programming.
SUCH PROBLEMS ARE relatively common and usually are corrected quickly. There is an experiment on board Challenger now to study this type of mishap to help engineers devise ways to protect satellite commuter circuitry.
Scientists on the ground were distressed by the satellite outage. The loss of the satellite disrupted the radar data transmission program worked out over the weekend to circumvent trouble with the dish-shaped antenna needed to beam the radar data to Earth, using the satellite as a relay station
NASA SPOKESMAN JAMES Kukowski said the satellite problem forced the loss of the five high priority radar observation periods yesterday because the satellite was needed to relay commands to the radar unit as well as transmit its findings
He said the satellite problem and the earlier antenna problem meant the radar experiment would gather only about eight of the 42 hours planned of high-quality images of Earth. He said a significant interest. He said about 65 to 70 percent of the mission's objectives should be met.
Another potential problem arose when tropical storm Josephine formed over the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas and started moving slowly toward Florida.
See SHUTTLE, p. 5, col. 3
Opinions expressed in polls can change quickly, prof says
By LAURETTA SCHULTZ
Staff Reporter
Recent political opinion polls consistently have shown President Reagan with a sizable lead over Democratic hopeful Walter Mondale, but opinions reflected in polls can change quickly, a KU specialist on polls said last week.
Allan Cigler, the specialist and an associate professor of political science, said that well-designed polls were extremely accurate at assessing voters' opinions at a particular
Cugler said the possibility of opinions changing could affect polls in this year's presidential election.
"THEE IS A LARGE number of independent voters in this election," he said, "The support for either side tends to be soft. It doesn't take all that much to change soft support."
Until two years ago, Cigler taught a class in which students learned the important components of a good poll and practiced polling as a class project. He also used to conduct polls for candidates across the state.
"I quit because it wasn't worth the effort," he said. "The money was good, but it took a lot of time.
"I also quit because I liked working for candidates I supported and believed in. To be honest, there aren't any candidates I believe in, enough now to go to all that work for."
"A LOT OF PEOPLE think poll can start a bandwagon," he said. "If voters see one candidate is leading in the polls, they may try to support that candidate to back a winner."
Cigler said the opposite also could take place, hindering a leader's chances.
"But, a substantial lead in the polls can also create apathy on the side of the winner and among his followers," he said. "They think they think their candidate is a sure winner."
The Reagan campaign, however, should not be damaged significantly by voter pressure.
"The current polls might make Republicans a little careless," he said. "But that probably won't change the results of the election, even if it does happen."
THE CONSTRUCTION OF questions included in a poll is the most important factor in determining whether a survey is fair, Cigler said.
"A tremendous amount of effort has to go into the making of questions for a poll," he said. "A poll can be flawed by questions that are ambiguous. The poll might have a good-sized random sample, but the questions make the poll a bad one."
The type of interviewing done for a poll and the size of the sample are also important, Cigler said.
"Most of the bigger, national polls still have people going out to interview door to door," he said. "The network polls, such as ABC and CBS use, are done by random digit dialing. They can be done very quickly, but they are not always as accurate."
Cigler said national polls usually used a pool of 1,500-2,400 people. He said the margin of error in most national polls was generally 2 percent or 3 percent.
WHEN VOTERS READ the results of polls, Cigarler said, their minds are seldom changed. But polls can affect a candidate's fund raising power and approach to political
"While polls might not serve to change the voter's mind," Cigler said, "they can affect how much of a role they play."
"In some ways, polls set the agenda of
politics. They decide what things the system will address."
Cigler also said that people were becoming turned off by the abundance of polls conducted by various groups all over the country.
"There are so many polls, but they generate very little information," he said. "We have automated."
This perception is causing people's attitudes toward polls to change. Cagler said.
"THEER ARE MORE people refusing to be interviewed now for polls than ever," he said. "They used to feel flattered that someone wanted their opinion."
People's negative attitude toward pollsters can go even farther, he said, which was the case in polls for the New Hampshire primary.
"In New Hampshire, the electorate had been polled so many times that some of those people were getting back at the pollsters by lying," he said.
Heller is first in Viennese academic exchange program
Staff Reporter
By ERIKA BLACKSHER
Forty-six years after Francis Heller left Vienna, Austria, he will return to his homeland this spring as a visiting professor in the first student and faculty exchange program in the School of Law.
Heller, professor of law and political science, said yesterday that an exchange program in the law school had not occurred before because of a lack of personal contacts.
"One can't really do this by writing letters and saying, 'How would you people like to do this?' he said. "You really have to have personal contacts."
Heller said he had been chosen to go to Vienna partly because of his familiarity with
"I was born in Vienna, I went to school there; I speak the language; and it is just going to be a lot easier for me to sell the clothes on the market," someone who has to do it in "English," he said.
THE EXCHANGE OF faculty between the University of Vienna and the University of Kansas is restricted to professors of law, but the student exchange extends to any student who will not visit the University of Vienna until the 1885 academic year
The contact that led to an agreement to start an exchange program was made by Wallace Johnson, professor of East Asian language and culture, who spoke with Herbert Hausmanninger, professor of law in charge of the international exchange programs at the University of Vienna, Heller said.
AFTER A VISIT FROM Hausmaninger in September 1983 and correspondence between the two universities during the 1983-84 academic year, a mutual interest developed, and the decision to start the interest was made: Heller said.
"I just wandered over from where I was vacationing," he said. "We fell into a conversation, and I decided to invite him to the University."
Johnson, who visits Vienna every other summer, said that he didn't have that much money to spend on them.
Hans Peter Benner, a specialist in Roman law, will be the visiting professor from the University of Pavia.
"The presence of Professor Benohr means that the students of the University will have the opportunity to hear from and interact with a faculty member who not only comes to campus in cultural background," he said, "in addition to providing field that nobody else on this campus has."
Benohr also has first-hand knowledge of
the legal systems in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Heller said.
Heller, who has been at KU for 36 years, said he would teach a course in constitutions and policies with emphasis on the United States.
"THE TEACHING ASSIGNMENT that I've been asked to undertake there makes it necessary for me to think about a subject that I teach regularly on different terms," he said. "This inevitably means that I will be students in the future that I haven't before."
Heller said he also was looking forward to the literary resources that would be available to him in Vienna because they would help him to finish writing a book.
To complete the book, which deals with myth, fiction and symbols involved in the development of law, Heller needs to consult German, French and Italian books.
"To be able to be in a place where I can walk into the library and there they are, and perhaps next to them six others that I haven't heard of before is going to help me
The book, which is not yet named, deals with nonrational aspects of law — myth and legend — that have played an important role in law, he said. Those factors contradict the notion that law is an exclusively rational system.
Francis Heller, professor of law and political science, displays his collection of owls in his office. Heller, originally from Vienna, will teach at the University of Vienna this spring as part of a new student and faculty exchange program in the School of Law.