6A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
STATE
TUESDAY,OCTOBER8,2002
kansan.com The student newspaper of the University of Kansas Front Page News • Sports Arts • Opinion • Extra
Pre-Law Society
Meeting: Tuesday, October 8 at 8:00 pm in room 107 Green Hall
Straight talk, like 43 years
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — A giant crane placed a statue of a Kansa Indian atop the state Capitol yesterday, only to take it down several hours later because of a problem with bolts holding it in place.
Statue sits on statehouse briefly
The placement of "Ad Astra" on a tower on the dome was supposed to end decades of delays, artistic disputes and budget wrangling. Hundreds of people watched yesterday afternoon as the crane hoisted it over the dome, then lowered it gently into place.
Workers then started tightening 17 bolts that connected a plate at the base of the statue into another plate at the top of the dome's tower. But five of the bolts wouldn't tighten enough, according to Ben Bauman, spokesman for the state Department of Administration.
"This is a pretty big engineering project," Bauman said. "Not everything goes together as planned."
Set to replace a single, large lightbulb atop the Capitol, the statue weighs about 3 tons and stands some 20 feet tall. Bauman said state engineers had told state
officials that there might be a hitch when it was lowered into place.
After the statue returned to the ground, the bolts were to be removed from the plate on its base, the holes in the base rethreaded, and the bolts put back in place.
Bauman said workers hoped to hoist the statue back atop the Capitol sometime this morning.
"I don't think there's any embarrassment about this," Baum told reporters.
"There was always a chance they were going to have to bring it down."
Other officials, however, saw the return of "Ad Astra" to the ground, after the celebratory raising yesterday afternoon, as a major embarrassment.
"It's a P.R. disaster, as far as I'm concerned," said Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, a critic of the project. "Everyone was assured it was going to be done right the first time."
In recent months, Gov. Bill Graves, an ardent Ad Astra supporter, ignored critics who said the state shouldn't spend money on the project because of the
state's financial problems.
Initiated 14 years ago, the project's cost eventually reached $1.6 million, including work on the dome and a new plaza on the south Capitol grounds.
Private donations are expected to pay for at least $1.5 million of the costs, thanks in part to $500,000 in anonymous contributions announced by Graves and the Topeka Community Foundation on Friday.
But criticism, muted by yesterday afternoon's festive atmosphere at the Capitol, surfaced again last night, as a crowd of about 70 people gathered to watch the work on the statue.
LaTonia Wright, a Washburn University social work student, said she was upset with the idea of the state proceeding. She said money spent on the statue, whether state funds or private donations, could be better used to help needy families.
As for the statue's return to the ground, she said; "Oh yes, it's an embarrassment. Is that more money?"
Bauman said he thought a second raising of the statue won't change the cost of the project much.
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Booksigning with John Waters
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Witness jailed during murder trial
(formerly the Mt. Oread Bookshop)
The Associated Press
OLATHE — The judge in John E. Robinson Sr.'s murder trial ordered a prosecution witness jailed overnight last night, after the woman said she had no plans to return Tuesday to continue her testimony.
Johnson County District Judge John Anderson III ordered Lore Remington, a Canadian who prosecutors believe was one of the last people to have contact with one of Robinson's alleged
victims, jailed on a $25,000 material witness bond.
Robinson, 58, is charged with capital murder in the deaths of Suzette Trouten of Michigan and Izabela Lewicka. Both were found in barrels on the Olathe man's rural property in Linn County, about 60 miles south of Kansas City.
Trouten told her that she was moving to Kansas to take a new job and would be traveling a lot. Remington testified.
until early March of 2000.
In March 2000, she said, she stopped hearing from Trouten but then received an e-mail, followed by telephone calls, from a man she knew as J.R. Turner.
Prosecutors say Turner was Robinson, who they believe had already killed Trouten before Turner began communicating with Remington.
Earlier yesterday, Remington, 36, testified that she met Trouen in a sex-themed Internet chat room in 1996 and communicated with her on an almost daily basis
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