Thursday
September 26, 2002
Vol.113. Issue No.26
Today's weather
75°
Tonight: 54°
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Tell us your news Call Jay Krall, Brooke Hesler or Kyle Ramsey at 864-4810
KU's desktop graffiti holds messages etched in time. Jayplay
classroom desks etched in time
Different dieting tactics give mixed results
By Caleb Nothwehr and Louise Stauffer
cnothwehr@kansan.com
lstaffer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writers
As Chancellor Robert Hemenway works to stay healthy, students attempt to find their own methods of weight control.
Slimming down
By Jenna Goepfert
jgoepfert@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
The skinny on Hemenway's diet
Chancellor Hemenway's Top Five Weight-loss Tips:
1) Think in terms of small portions.
2) Eat a balanced meal.
3) Keep your mind on calories.
4) Exercise at least 300 minutes every week.
5) Don't hesitate to consult experts in the field.
decided to tell them to run a story that I'm on a diet and not suffering from some deadly disease or something."
Students on the Lawrence campus have noticed the change in Hemenway's physique and have been impressed.
been impressed.
"When I saw him at my sister's graduation in May and then now — that's pretty good. I have to give him credit," Rudy Slitty, Salina junior, said.
Hemenway said he was encouraged to join the year-long regimen after his wife, Leah, had participated in the study the year before.
tetle meals.
He also exercises about 300 minutes each week,
usually by taking vigorous walks on campus.
"I have twice as much energy as I did before," he said. "My staff is not so excited about that. You feel so much better. You feel a certain confidence in yourself."
Hemenway said he had tried cutting back food intake and increasing exercise in order to just lose weight before. He said the key to a successful diet was maintaining that target weight. He credited the education he received from the weight control study for his success and discipline.
“There are just a lot of factors in society that encourage you to overeat," Hemenway said. "I'm just a recipient of their wisdom."
He said his sons still ate the food he missed most, but they did it discreetly.
"Probably the reason I needed to go on the diet in the first place is I love potato chips," he said. "But I also don't feel inclined to break my discipline."
Edited by Amanda Sears
Documents disappearing more often
By Molly Gise
mgise@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
A year ago, the government documents collection branch of the University of Kansas libraries received a strange order from the Government Printing Office: to find and destroy a CD-ROM that contained information about large-surface water supplies in the United States.
While such a request is rare, the reduction of information sent to documents libraries is not, said Ken Lohrentz, librarian and bibliographer at KU's government documents collection. Information sent to the library ranges from brochures on nutrition to congressional records to census reports.
The instructions came at the request of the U.S. Geological Survey, which produced the CD, after the agency decided the information on it should not be publicly available. The request was made about a month after Sept. 11, 2001.
More and more information produced by the GPO is being uploaded online, instead of being printed and shipped to documents libraries. Over the last ten years, the documents library has received far fewer publications. Lohrentz said.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, some government agencies have removed or "whitewashed" information from their Web sites, Lohrentz said. The trend of disap
"It concerns me as a librarian and as a citizen as well when information is removed from the public," Lohrentz said.
pearing information worries Lohrentz, especially because some of that information was never sent to documents libraries.
According to the association's Web site, www.ala.org, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency are two government agencies that have removed information from their Web sites since Sept. 11,2001.
Lohrentz's concerns are echoed by Prudence Adler, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries. The University's library system is a member of ARL.
The recall of the Geological Survey CD and the scrubbing of information from federal Web sites indicates a change of what the government thinks the public should know, Adler said.
"Document libraries' mission is to provide public access to government information."Adler said.
The documents belong to the government, which means they can be pulled from the shelves at the request of the Superintendent of Documents, Adler said.
he should know." "They may not be making some of this publicly available if they think there are risks." Adler said.
Anton Bubnovskiy/Kansan
Watson Library's government documents collection has experienced a wave of change over the past year. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, government agencies have reduced and, in some cases, recalled political documents and information distributed to the public.
Recall of government documents is not new, Adler said, but these requests usually were made to correct inaccurate information, not to hide it.
"In some cases we know," Adler said,
"In other cases, we don't."
— Edited by Ryan Malashock
Congressional act decreased privacy
By Molly Gise
mgise@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Library circulation records became less private under an act approved by Congress about a month after the Sept. 11,2001 attacks.
The USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) affects private records, tracking of international students and electronic surveillance, among other things.
The PATRIOT Act eases the process by which officials can request circulation records from libraries.
Like most states, Kansas has laws that protect the privacy of personal library records, said Bill Myers, director of library development for the University of Kansas.
While the law has not affected day-to-day library activities, privacy of records is essential in libraries.
SEE PRIVACY ON PAGE 8A
RAs want change, issue report
By George Schulz gschulz@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
Current and former Residence Assistants issued a report citing poor RA working conditions to the Department of Student Housing Tuesday morning.
"When one compares the way that KU compensates and treats its RAs with other schools from around the nation, it becomes clear that major revisions are necessary." the report says. "These are a few simple steps that the Department of Student Housing can take to significantly improve the working conditions of its RAs."
Compiled by the Resident Assistant Wages Task Force, the report compares the treatment of RAs at the University of Kansas to nine peer universities. including Kansas State University and Emporia State University. The report concludes that RA salaries should be increased, workloads should be cut back and a representative council should be established to address workers' complaints.
The task force, composed of one current RA, two former RAs and three student allies of the RAs, began work on the report in May and finished just before the fall semester began. Members of the task force called housing administrators from the nine schools and asked questions such as how much the universities' RAs were paid..
Travis Weller, Garden City junior helped construct the report and supports the suggested changes. He said he hoped the housing department would put the recommended changes into effect as soon as possible. Weller was an Academic Resource Center assistant in Lewis Hall but has never been an RA.
Diana Robertson, associate director of the housing department, said she was concerned that only one of the eight people who helped write the report. Heather Young, was a current RA. Robertson added that she was skeptical that the report accurately reflected the concerns of all or even some of the current RAs.
Robertson said the housing department was willing to consider any areas of concern current RAs had. But, she said, the report merely compared the treatment of RAs at KU with the treatment of those at other universities.
For now, the housing department has passed the report on the RA-Proctor Council, a housing department committee that represents RAs and scholarship hall proctors. The council will review the report and give a recommendation to the housing department. At that time, Robertson said, the department would be willing to review and consider the treatment of RAs at the University.
"I want to make sure we review accurate information and comparisons," she said.
Meanwhile, authors of the report will petition the Student Senate to support the report. That measure will be voted on Wednesday.
"I think the report is reasonable," said Young, Abilene senior and an RA at Gertrude Sellards Pearson-Corbin Hall. "I'm hoping we can get things through with the RA-Proctor Council."
Edited by Amy Schmitz
PROPOSED CHANGES
A weekly salary increase or workload decrease.
Higher compensations, at least $20 a month, to returning resident assistants Establishment of an RA council that addresses grievances biweekly with the Department of Student Housing assistant director
Source: RA working conditions report
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