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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
VOL.102,NO.57
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 10.1992
ADVERTISING:864-4358
(USPS 650-640)
Student Senate eyes reserves
NEWS:864-4810
StudEx could authorize use of excess funds
By Stacy Morford
Kansan staff writer
Student senators may get their hands on an extra $30,000 to $40,000 next week if Student Senate Executive Committee, led by the chairpersons of each Senate committee, decides to free up part of a $180,000 reserve.
Senate treasurer Kevin Sigourney said that former treasurer Carl Damon set the $180,000 aside as a safety catch three years ago when the crisis in the Persian Gulf threatened to raise gasoline prices and the cost of operating KU on Wheels.
Damon said the University required Senate to hold $40,000 in reserve. He
said the rest was built up as a safety catch and to finance expensive but worthwhile projects — specifically, the lecture series that was killed by Senate last month. But Sigourney and vice president Lance Wright agreed that while some backup, maybe $150,000, was necessary, $180,000 was not.
"This is not an extra $180,000 that we're stashing behind the door and saving up for whatever purpose — we can't invest it, we can't put it into endowment, we don't gain anything." Wright said. "What we're trying to do is fiscally smart with it. Our projection for fees could be way off, and then we'd need the reserve to be effective."
Sigourney said that most of the decisions made in Senate this fall were influenced by the amount of money the senators believed to be left in the unallocated account. He said they probably had been more careful with the money than they would have been
but not more careful than they should have been.
"I really don't think there are that many groups that it affected that negatively," Wright said. "Sure, some took substantial cuts, but most of them deserved those cuts."
Wright said that the $20,000 lecture series bill, which would have brought a public figure such as Magic Johnson or Nelson Mandela to speak at KU, was probably the only bill that was killed because of the perceived lack of money.
"This does open things up so if somebody comes through with a big ticket item, we don't have to be as closed minded as the early figures led people to believe," Sigourney said.
A second lecture series bill, this one for $10,000, will be brought before the Senate finance committee tomorrow. Wright said that groups previously had not been allowed to readdress Senate about financing a bill once it was killed, but he could not find a
written rule that forbid it.
Senate saw more legislation than usual this fall, and it had voted to support most of the groups that asked for money. Sigourney said.
"We were going at a rate there that was kind of scary, and everybody started coming to me saying 'How much do we have left? Can we do this? Can we fund that?' he said.
StudEx was divided on the issue. Student rights committee co-chairperson John Shoemaker said that he
Damon said that $100,000 of the reserve had been saved to cover extra transportation costs. But the transportation board built its own $80,000 reserve fund this year, and that reserve will grow to $100,000 when bus pass prices increase. Sigourney said
Sigourney began to question the necessity of the $180,000 reserve, which he thought had been required by student affairs, when he was searching for overflow accounts.
Senate's leftover monev
Student Senate carried $214,000 over from last year to this year. Excess tuition of $7,000 leaves Senate with $221,000 this year. With $180,000 in reserves, Senate has $41,000 that is unallocated.
Sean M. Tevis / KANSAN
Source; Kansan staff research
did not want to see student fees increase, as was planned, if $180,000 was not being used in a Senate account.
Andy Shore, the other student rights co-chairperson said: 'We've been shaping people's thoughts all along by saying we only have so much money left. Can we change that now with a clear conscience? We're on a course to fund those programs that need
funding, so there's no reason to go after the $180,000."
StudEx will decide whether it will tap the account at its next meeting on Nov. 18.
"If you asked me at the start of the year, I never would have thought we'd need to dip into this account," Sigourney said. "But at the rate we're going now, I don't know how we'll function without it."
Tunes in the Union
Irene Lanier/ KANSAN
Melanie Pearson, Leavenworth senior, plays the piano during opening festivities at the Kansas Union. The south section of the Union, which was remodeled, opened to students yesterday.
Panel says homeless programs lack financing
By J.R. Clairborne Kansan staff writer
Lack of financing for homeless programs is the biggest problem facing local agencies, a panel addressing homeless issues said last night.
The six-member panel spoke before 25 people at the Jayhawk Room in the Kansas Union. The event was part of KU Homeless Awareness Week sponsored by the KU Homeless Coalition.
The panel's central idea revolved around the problems of finance that many home-
Steve Fleeker, coordinator of the Lawrence/Douglas County Coalition for the Homeless, said that because of the University's presence, there was a competitive market in Lawrence resulting in one of the highest rental rates in the state. He also said that Lawrence had a high low-income population at 24 percent, with 11.5 percent living below the poverty level. The city has only 670 affordable housing units for the 5,677 people qualified to live in them.
The panel said that although there were several programs available to serve the homeless, there was little to no financing. Those programs included rental or mortgage assistance, aid for the mentally ill and cooperation among area shelter agencies such as the Salvation Army.
Of those services, the many regulations often bind the hands of the very agencies that were to help the homeless, said Sandy Praeger, state senator-elect.
Steve Nguyen, president of the coalition, said that panel members for the discussion were selected from various fields to show that homeless issues affected a broad spectrum of local society.
"I think it requires not just working together but also creativity in finding a way to do it."
"From the financial view to the legislature view as well as the parishioner's view, they were chosen to speak about homeless issues," he said.
The panelists were: John Solbach, retiring state representative; Maggie Wood, Outreach Case Manager for Community Support Services at the Bert Nash Community Mental Center; Forrest Swall, state representative-elect and assistant professor of social welfare at KU; Capt. George Windham of the Salvation Army; Fleeker; and Praeger Peter Sakach, Leavenworth senior, served as the moderator.
KU student devotes time as Gore aide
By Kristi Fogler Kansan staff writer
The rest of the nation may have forgotten about last week's presidential election excitement with its pomp and circumstance, but Pam McElwee has not.
McElwee, Lawrence senior, still speaks with excitement when she recalls spending election night in Little Rock, Ark., listening to Bill Clinton's and Al Gore's acceptance speeches as they won their bid for the presidency and vice presidency of the United States.
"It was a whole energy of people tired of hearing the message that they have to be divided on the environment and the economy," she said of the mood at Clinton and Gore's victory party.
McElwee, a political science and environmental studies major, took this semester off and is working as an intern for Sen. Gore, D-Tenn., in Washington, D.C.
As one of Gore's environmental interns, McElwee has worked on the Endangered Species Act and its impact on Tennessee, surface mining violations in Tennessee and public land acts.
McEllen also has worked on a legislative history of Gore's and other senators' voting records on various environmental projects, including offshore oil drilling, water pollution and coastal pollution.
This is not the first time McElwee has been an intern for Gore. She worked for him from January to June 1991. She met Gore through the Washington Semester Program, which sends about 20 KU students to various agencies, special interest groups and lawmakers in Washington every spring semester.
Burdett Loomis, professor of political science and director of the program, said McEwee first came into contact with Gore because she was interested in working for a Democratic senator with an environmental background.
"She's a svery committed activist," he said. "She's the kind of person who is perfectly suited for this work."
McElwee's future is uncertain. A two-time Rhodes Scholar nominee, she said she did not know whether her work with Gore would end Jan. 20 when he assumes his position of vice president.
Whatever her future with Gore, McEllwee said she would like to continue working in Washington.
"I'll find out hopefully before Jan. 20 what will happen next," she said I "worked with the Environmental Protection Agency once. I was a summer staff assistant there last year. But I would like to work in the forestry service or with the vice presidential staff."
A KU organization this week is honoring prisoners of war and servicemen missing in action by tying ribbons around campus trees.
Ribbon wrap
See story, Page 3.
Kentucky Street fire claims lives of two house cats
Peltier appeal
A federal court yesterday heard an appeal about the case of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, found guilty of killing two FBI agents in 1975
See story, Page 8.
Bv Kristv Dorsev
Two house cats apparently brought about their own deaths in a triplex fire yesterday afternoon at 1519 Kentucky St.
Kansan staff writer
The fire began when a mattress that was learning against a wall fell too close to an open-flame wall furnace, said Jerry Karr, lieutenant chief for the Lawrence Fire Department. Karr said the cats were known to sleep on top of the mattress. He also said he thought the pets knocked it over.
Total damage loss was set at $25,000, Karr said. That estimate included damage to the building and the loss of the apartment's contents. Other than the animals, there were no injuries. The two units adjacent to the burned apartment were undamaged.
Lee Collard, the tenant in the burned apartment, said he had insurance to cover his losses, but the money would not bring back his cats or replace the sentimental value of his burned possessions.
"Tve got a $21,000 insurance policy, and I fig
ure I'm maxed out," he said. "It's replacement-cost insurance, but the sentimental value of some things can never be replaced."
Several thousands of dollars worth of books were destroyed, Collard said. However, he was able to save some of his camera equipment.
"If I had been at home, it would have been out," he said.
Ellen Lefferd, who lives in one of the units next to Collard's, said she called the fire department at 1:25 p.m. to report smoke coming out of the apartment next door.
"I just smelled smoke," she said. "I was sitting in the kitchen. I came out here, and there was smoke coming out of the front. I ran in and called 911."
Lefferd also called Ehtel DeGraff, owner of the triplex. DeGraff was also at work when the fire broke out. She said that officials told her the building had been paired up and that she planned to fix the building.
"They said that structurally it is not hurt, but cosmetically it will need some work," she said.
Irene Lanier / KANSAN
Members of the Lawrence Fire Department check to make sure flames are completely extinguished in an apartment at 1519 Kentucky St.