TODAY'S WEATHER: Partly cloudy skies with a high of 59. SPORTS: Kansas wins its last football game of the season
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
TALK TO US: Contact
Kursten Phelps or Leila
Schultes at (785) 864-4810
or editor@kansan.com
WWW.KANSAN.COM
MONDAY
NOVEMBER 26, 2001
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ISSUE 61 VOLUME 112
GOLFITO, COSTA RICA
Investigators arrest woman in connection to slain student
Death of Shannon Martin in Costa Rica last May leads to 27-year-old woman's arrest
By Paul Smith Kansan staff writer
Investigators made the first arrest in the Shannon Martin murder case last week, and have suggested more may follow.
Costa Rican police on Tuesday arrested a 27-year-old female suspected of involvement in the murder of Martin, a senior at the University of Kansas stabbed last May while studying abroad in Golfito, Costa Rica.
Shannon Martin
Martin's mother, Jeanette Stauffer, said that FBI agents and operatives from the Costa Rican Organization of Judicial Investigation told her on Nov. 14 to expect an arrest within the week.
"They've also told me there are others involved," Stauffer said.
Stauffer said she contacted the FBI office in Miami on Nov. 14 to check on the investigation's progress, and that the special agent working the case indicated the arrest would be imminent. The organization confirmed the arrest in an e-mail later that day.
"I really believe that justice will be served by the Costa Rican justice system," Stauffer said. "I hope there is enough circumstantial evidence to convict. They didn't have a lot of physical evidence."
Stauffer said she was confident that the female suspect, identified only as Cruz, would be treated fairly by the law.
A Costa Rican judge ruled that Cruz must serve the next six months in prison while the murder investigation proceeds.
Chancellor Robert Hemenway said the University greeted news of the arrest as a promising development.
"We hope all those responsible will be arrested and brought to justice," Hemenway said.
He lobbied U.S. senators and the state government to give the Martin case appropriate attention.
"Anytime a University student is harmed or, in this case, killed we want to do everything we can to help the victim's family." Hemeway said, and make sure the killers are brought to justice."
An endangered science
KU systematists work to sustain a field of study in danger of becoming extinct as fast as the creatures they gather
Contact Smith at 864-4810
Story by Eve Lamborn
Robert Brooks has been attacked in his sleep by vampire bats, shaken tarantulas from his boots and eaten nothing but rice for a month. He spends weeks every year hacking his way with a machete through jungles, collecting insects for KU's entomology museum in Snow Hall.
To find these bugs, he looks under fungus, pulls chunks of bark off trees, uses nets, sifts through leaves and even pulls clumps of insects off trees like grapes.
insects or bird nests.
The KU entomology collection manager has found a rhinoceros beetle the size of a clenched fist, a meat-eating red grasshopper that spans an open palm, giant walking sticks and butterflies with transparent wings that are nearly invisible
when they fly close to the ground.
"It's hard to find any species, where we go, that has a name on it," Brooks said.
Each of the 7 million specimens collected by Brooks and others for KU's Natural History Museum
and Biodiversity Research Center
has a story behind it. These specimens record the mind-boggling variety of life on Earth, so diverse and intricate that humans have yet to discover more than a small fraction of it.
Systematists make it their life's work to chip away at the mountain of unknown species by collecting them for museums and classifying them, which is known as taxonomy. The scientists then try to decipher the evolutionary relationships of these species. While the cutting of forests has accelerated extinctions, the number of systematists has dwindled in recent years.
Bucking that trend is KU's systematics program, backed by one of the country's largest university museum collections. Graduate students from around the world come here to learn from KU scientists, who are gathering still more speci-
DISAPPEARING ECOSYSTEMS
Leonard Kristishtalka, who has an Einsteinian shock of dark gray hair and a mustache to match, oversees the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at KU. He said the Earth suffered from a biodiversity crisis because of the loss of its animals and plants.
Some scientists have estimated that 1,000 species of animals and plants slip into extinction each day, and many of these have yet to be discovered, he said. Scientists know of fewer than 2 million species of animals and plants on the Earth, leaving anywhere from 10 million to 50 million yet unknown.
SEE SYSTEMATISTS ON PAGE 6A
Halls may ban smoking
He said that only 7 percent of applicants for on-campus housing this year indicated they smoked and
Stoner has not yet indicated if and when he would decide to make the halls non-smoking.
Housing director mulls smoke-free halls as early as Fall 2002
By Jeremy Clarkson Kansan staff writer
Students who smoke may be forced to take their cigarettes outside residence halls this next school year.
For the past year, the Department of Student Housing and the Association of University Residence Halls have contemplated making all KU residence halls smoke-free. Now, there are only three residence halls
Ken Stoner, director of Student Housing, said more floors at residence halls were designated non-smoking every year because more establishments were banning smoking and more students were preferring non-smoking rooms on their housing applications.
— Templin, Lewis and Ellsworth halls — that are non-smoking, plus numerous floors in the other halls that are designated for no smoking
wanted to live in a smoking environment. He said if the halls were designated non-smoking, there would be fewer roommate conflicts.
David Levine, Howell, N.J., freshman, said designating all residence halls non-smoking was a good idea because the halls smelled bad.
Levine said that because he lived on a smoking floor in McCollum Hall, he would often smell smoke in the hallway and, at times, his allergies would be affected by it.
"Smoking issues are the largest single-category complaints," he said.
"I think it would be a nice change here," he said.
"They could go downstairs and smoke," he said of smokers.
On the other hand, Ryan Harmon, Beloit freshman, said he didn't want all of the residence halls smoke-free, even though he is a non-smoker. He also lives on a smoking floor in McCollum, and he said unless people smoked in the hallway, he wasn't affected by the smoke.
"If they keep their windows open, it all flirts out," he said.
There are nine schools in the Big 12 that have switched their residence halls to non-smoking buildings. Stoner said that because of the increase in non-smoking residence halls, the possibility of all KU halls
JAMIE ROPER/KANSAN
Josh Bryant, Munij freshman, smokes a cigarette in the afternoon sun before returning to his Hashinger Hall room. Bryant said he was unaware of proposed changes that could require all residence halls to be smoke-free.
going non-smoking was more likely. "That is the way things are moving," he said.
Contact Clarkson at 864-4810
University halts talks on contract with GTAs
By J. R. Mendoza Kansan staff writer
The coalition will meet with University officials on Wednesday, Dec. 3. According to rules for contract talks, the two sides have to meet to make a decision on the status of the negotiations. That meeting will give the coalition a chance to respond to the University's move.
The Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition wants to continue negotiating a new contract despite the University of Kansas' decision to declare that talks have reached an impasse.
GTAs will remain under their current contract until the new contract is agreed upon.
Last Monday, the University issued a press release stating that it was requesting that the Public Employees Review Board of the state of Kansas mediate the contract negotiations.
According to the release, the University wants an impasse declared because of "irreconcilable differences" between the parties. The release said the University chose mediation because the coalition had stated publicly that its members "aren't willing to settle."
Amy Cummins, coalition president and Lawrence graduate teaching assistant, said she was disturbed by the University's request because it would extend the process of coming to terms on a new three-year contract.
"We don't see what can be gained by halting negotiations," Cummins said. "It stops discussions of how to improve learning opportunities for students and the working conditions for teachers. GTAs are confused. They don't understand at the administration is after."
Another reason that the University cited for the impasse was the coalition's request for an increase in the minimum base salary proposal. The University says that would require a $3 million increase to the University budget during the next three years.
three years Lynn Bretz, interim director of University Relations, said the coalition's demands for a salary increase could not be met, partly in part because of a shortfall in the state budget.
"It's far beyond what we can afford," she said. "Kansas is undergoing an economic downturn."
However, Cummins said the University was playing word games, and that wasn't a good excuse for halting negotiations.
Bretz also said mediation was the best solution because both the University and GTAs could focus on teaching students.
Cummins also questioned the University's decision to request an impasse the week of Thanksgiving break.
"They deliberately made it harder for GTAs to make decisions and decide what to do," she said. "The tension will simply increase. I thought things were going slowly but that we were getting somewhere."
Bretz said going to mediation was the best way to resolve the contract dispute. "We're bargaining in good faith," she said.
The University and the coalition have been negotiating GTAs' salaries, health benefits and tuition waivers for more than a year in preparation for a new contract.
Contact Mendoza at 864-4810
INSIDETODAY
WAR ON TERRORISM ...5A
HOROSCOPES ...2B
WEATHER ...4B
CROSSWORD ...4B
COMING IN TOMORROW'S KANSAN
FOOTBALL: The University searches for a new head coach to lead its troubled program.
CAMPUS MINISTRY: Some students accuse a Christian organization of being predatory
The University Daily Kansan is the student newspaper of the University of Kansas. The first copy is paid through the student activity fee. Additional copies of the Kansan are 25 cents. Subscriptions can be purchased at 119 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
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