SPORTS: Four high school seniors were expected to sign basketball letters of intent yesterday to play for Kansas, Page 9
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
VOL.102,NO.59
(USPS 650-640)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1992
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
Daron J. Bennett/ KANSAN
NEWS:864-4810
1.
Michael Czel, Pueblo, Colo., graduate student, punches information into his hand-held recorder/printer to record a parking violation. Czel was patrolling the its north of the Kansas Union yesterday.
KU parking gets ticket computers
Soggy paper and ballpoint pens with ink slowed by cold weather can make ticket writing difficult for KU parking officers of the KU Parking Department.
By Christine Laue
Kansan staff writer
But eight new hand-held computers for issuing parking citations have alleviated these difficulties, as well as trouble that parking violators may have when trying to read handwriting on tickets.
"It's really pretty fool-proof," said Donna Hultine, assistant director of parking.
Although the new system is more accurate and helps parking department employees process tickets, it may hurt excessive violators, those people with three or more unpaid parking citations.
"For the typical person who gets a ticket and comes in and pays it, I don't think it will really affect them."
Hultine said.
parking officers now can cause excessive violators more easily and have the cars of such violators towed. They simply punch a license or parking permit number into the computer, which displays a person's record. With the hand-written system, they had to flip through pages to find license or permit numbers.
"It's actually something they did not do that often, because it is so tedious to go through that list," Hultt said.
Once the computers indicate that a car belongs to an excessive violator, parking officers must call the department to check whether the person has paid the tickets. At the end of each parking official's shift, the department are updated with information on who has and has not paid their tickets.
portable computers to the office's computers with a cable. The office computers automatically record the tickets.
The computers receive the information when officials hook up the
The system not only will decrease the amount of time it takes to record the tickets, but also will increase revenue from parking tickets.
Money for the $50,000 system came from the department's revenue. Hultine said. The department is self-supporting.
But Hultine said increased revenue did not mean parking officials would issue more tickets. The increase could come from the 15 to 20 tickets of the 300 tickets issued every day that normally would be incomplete or the handwriting was illegible.
Parking officers have issued 3.314 tickets since Oct. 30, when they began issuing tickets with the computers.
issued about 368 tickets every day with the new system and about 400 with the hand-written system. She said one reason that the average with the new system was lower could be that parking officers were getting accustomed to the new hand-held computers.
Kent Rains, parking official, said the new computers were not hard to use and were more accurate than the hand-written means of issuing tickets.
Hultine said parking officers
"It helps you keep from making mistakes when writing tickets," said Rains, Sharon Springs senior.
Hutline said the computer system also was more accurate because fewer people must handle the tickets. Recording the tickets now takes one person, rather than eight to 15 as, with the hand-written system.
"Every time it's handled there's another opportunity for error," she said.
KU Lecture Series bill fails in committee
By Stacy Morford
Kansan staff writer
The KU Lecture Series, resurrected for a few brief hours in Student Senate's finance committee yesterday, was put to its final rest when fewer than the required three-fourths of the committee members present voted for the $10,000 bill.
The money could have been used either to bring a public figure to speak at KU this year, or saved and added to next year's allocations to contract a more expensive speaker in Spring 1994.
Three weeks ago, Senate voted on the original lecture series bill, which had amended by the finance committee from $20,000 to $10,000. In Senate, the bill was raised from $10,000 to $15,000. Then Senate failed to pass it.
The amount allocated for the series was again lowered to $10,000 in finance committee before that second bill failed to pass yesterday.
Former Senate treasurer Carl Damon said last week that one reason for the reserve was to finance special projects such as the lecture series.
Several committee members tried to postpone the vote on the second bill, but the committee would not comply because other members said that waiting two weeks would hamper the Lecture Series committee's ability to contract a worthwhile speaker.
Senate has $180,000 in its reserve fund. Damon set the money aside three years ago when the crisis in the Persian Gulf threatened to raise gasoline prices and the cost of operating KU on Wheels.
Gene Sherry, Orland, Ill., senior,
said that the primary reason the first
bill had been shot down was Senate's
lack of money, and he questioned
whether funds would be taken from
that $10,000 could not bring in a good speaker, while $15,000 probably could. But $15,000 also was more money than Senate could afford, she said.
Senate's reserve account that could support the second series bill.
Margaret Hu, Manhattan senior, rationalized Senate's decision. She said that Senate must have thought
See related stories, Page 3.
Clinton to fight Pentagon's ban of homosexuals
Officials say military personnel not prepared for policy change
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — As president, Bill Clinton will be forced to deal with one of the most explosive issues affecting the military in decades — the Pentagon's 50-year ban on homosexuals and his promise to end it.
Clinton has not said when or how such a policy change would be instituted. And few inside the Pentagon have begun to prepare the military's 1.8 million members for such a significant change, officials said.
But Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan administration, said, "Even if he doesn't act, which he could by signing an executive order, the courts will make the Pentagon do it."
Just Tuesday, a federal judge in Los Angeles reaffirmed his order that the Navy reinstate a homosexual sailor, though the judge did not rule on the overall issue of whether the military ban is legal under the Constitution.
Speaking to reporters yesterday in Little Rock, Ark, Clinton said that he did not think that homosexual status alone, in the absence of some destructive behavior, should disqualify people from serving in the military.
The president-elect said that he intended to consult with military leaders about the mechanics of a change in policy but did not say when that might occur.
"I think there are ways that we can deal with this that will increase the comfort level of a lot of military folks," he said.
Adm. William Crowe, the retired chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Clinton adviser on defense issues, said that he had told the governor to move carefully.
Crowe said that he specifically was asked about the issue in a meeting with Clinton and that he said he did not agree necessarily with the governor. They agreed to discuss it further, Crowe said.
Revoking the ban would be one of the most far-reaching social changes imposed on the armed services since President Truman ordered African Americans integrated into the military in 1948. Proponents of a change in the policy have expressed hope that Clinton will remove the ban in his first days in office.
About 14,000 men and women have been kicked out of the services during the past 10 years because they were homosexual.
In the past, the courts have backed the Pentagon directive that states that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" and that the presence of homosexuals in the military impedes "discipline, good order and morale."
And two of the Pentagon's most senior officers — Gen. Colin Powell, the chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the chief of staff of the Army — repeated
have declared their opposition to any change in the policy.
Both four-star generals, who are expected to continue in service under Clinton, contend that the issue affects their commitment, dignity, morale and rights to privacy.
"It is difficult in a military setting where there is no privacy, where you don't get choice of association, where you don't get choice of where you live, to introduce a group of individuals who are proud, brave, loyal, good Americans but who favor a homosexual lifestyle." Powell said in congressional testimony earlier this year. "I think it would be prejudicial to good order and discipline to try to integrate that in the current military structure."
Sullivan said that to ask homosexuals and heterosexuals to share latries, barracks and showers would create very difficult management problems.
He also said that he owed his sol-
son a certain amount of privacy and
the right to choose.
And privately, other top military officers said that they were concerned about a wave of resignations and disruptions should the ban be lifted.
"It would be a wrenching change," said one four-star general who headed a service branch, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We're not ready for it. Good people will leave the military in droves over this."
One senior officer said that a significant education program should be put in place to inform the military about homosexual lifestyle and how to adjust to it.
"We have been allowed — by law — to become homophobic," the officer said.
Korb, now with the Brookings Institution in Washington, said, "The Pentagon generals will just have to prove their leadership on this one. They will have to help their troops grapple with this issue. It is not an insurmountable problem."
The fact that the judge in Los Angeles had to issue a court order to force the Navy to reinsteal a gay sailor this week reflects the bitter opposition among many in the armed forces.
The sailor, Keith Meinhold, 30, of Palo Alto, Calif., is supposed to be sworn in again today and returned to his job as a sonar crew instructor at Moffett Naval Air Station near San Francisco.
A group of film students has formed a new organization to help unify those at the University of Kansas who are interested in film making.
Film group formed
See story, Page 3.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin told U.S. senators yesterday in a letter that Americans were held in prison camps after World War II. He also said that some were "summarily executed by the Stalin regime" but others still lived in his country voluntarily.
POWs in Russia
Students say graffiti expresses message in wrong way
See story, Page 5.
By Joe Harder
Black letters reading "Stop Raping" spray-painted on campus buildings caught the attention of several students yesterday.
"I was wondering what it was about, who did it, or if there have been a lot of rapes on campus," said Keith Ladd, Overland Park freshman, standing near a column in front of Fraser Hall's west entrance, which displayed the graffiti at eye level.
Kansan staff writer
Tara Schuley, Manhattan junior, who paused in front of Watson Library, said that she agreed with the message but not the medium. The west side of the stairway leading into the library's main entrance had also been painted with the message.
"I don't think they should have gone to those lengths, painting it on the wall," she said. "But I agree with the sentiment. For me, it tied in with the session when the women were sitting in a group blowing the whistles every 15 seconds."
Members of Women's Student Union blew whistles Oct.
28 during Domestic Violence Awareness Month as a
reminder that a woman is beaten every 15 seconds.
Burdel Welsh, KU police representative, said that the graffiti had been reported during the weekend. Other messages painted near Wescoe Hall, which have since been removed, read "Recycle Man" and "You can't beat a woman," he said.
Police do not know who painted the signs.
Welsh said that the complaints had not come because of the content of the messages.
The graffiti is classified under municipal statutes as "painting and staining." a mismeanion. Welsh said.
"The complaints came in because of the vandalism," he said.
Mike Richardson, facilities operations director, said that graffiti was normally removed with a chemical cleaning agent.
"Depending on the material used and what type of surface, we may have to sandblast it off," he said. Richardson said he did not know the cost of removing the graffiti.
"It's a persistent problem, but not a big problem," Richardson said.
Graffiti was discovered on the west wall of the stairs at the main entrance of Watson Library during the weekend. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the damage.