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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday November 19,1987 Vol.98,No.64
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
(USPS 650-640)
KU faculty and staff vote against forming a union
By NOEL GERDES Staff writer
Staff writer
KU faculty and staff will not form a faculty union — at least not this year.
At Strong Hall's Brewster Auditorium last night, a state election supervisor announced that an effort to unionize KU faculty had failed.
Of the three options on the ballot, the no-union option gained 440 votes, or 51.9 percent of votes cast, barely enough to squeak past the simple majority needed to win.
See related story p. 14.
The KU chapter of the National Education Association came in second with 216 votes, or 25.5 percent of votes cast. The KU chapter of the American Association of University Professors finished third with 191 votes, or 22.6 percent.
Of the 1,017 eligible faculty and staff. 87 voted, or 83.2 percent.
Although the union vote was split, all groups involved agreed that the election turnout sent a clear message faculty think KU needs more room.
"I don't think there's any difference in opinion that we need help," said Richard Mann, University director of information resources.
Cliff Griffin, spokesman for KU NEA and professor of history, said, "If either the Board of Regents, the administration or the Legislature dismiss this vote casually, they'll be making a very serious mistake."
Marion "Pat" Bickford, president of KU Independent Faculty and professor of geology, said, "It ought to scare the Regents and the Legislature." Bickford's group opposed a faculty union.
Judith Ramaley, KU executive vice chancellor, said last night that she would take the union election results seriously.
"Tomorrow morning, I'm planning to renew my efforts to get more clients."
Robert Hohn, chairman of KU-AAUP's collective bargaining committee and professor of educational psychology and research, said he was disappointed by the election results but encouraged by how close
No faculty union
Question:
Should the faculty of the University of Kansas be represented by a union?
NO UNION
51.9% of votes
440 votes
KU-NEA
25.5% of votes
216 votes
KU-AAUP
22.6% of votes
191 votes
Of the 1,017 eligible faculty members, 847 voted, an 83.2% turnout. A simple majority was needed to win.
Richard Stewart/KANSAN
KU faculty and staff came to forming a union.
"The 48 percent in favor of a union is a message that a large group of faculty do want more involvement," Hohn said.
Election supervisors and observers began counting ballots about 20 minutes after the polls closed at 6 p.m. yesterday. Faculty had voted at three campus polling sites yesterday and Tuesday.
Paul K. Dickhoff Jr., executive director of the state Public Employee Relations Board, supervised the election
About 40 observers chatted as Dickhoff and representatives from the administration, KU-AAUP and KU-NEA verified 30 absentee ballots and threw out 59 challenged ballots.
Challenge ballots were cast by people not on the list of eligible voters.
But the room became hushed as Dickhoff and his staff opened four locked boxes wrapped in masking cloth against the front of the room and began counting.
Pencils started to tally. Only the
shuffling of 847 ballots and Dickhoff's stark voice counting, "One... two... three," broke the silence.
Most in the room showed little emotion after Dickhoff called off the last ballots. But Bickford, who had said that a union would create riffs between faculty and administrators, leaned over to a neighbor and said, "Hooray for the University of Kansas."
Spokesmen for both groups supporting a union said they would continue to remain active on campus and would not rule out another try at a faculty union.
"T
Judith Ramaley executive vice chancellor
Tomorrow morning, I'm planning to renew my efforts to get more funding for the University.'
"If all of the union forces had been able to consolidate, we would have done better." Griffin said.
Dickhoff said that by law, union organizers would have to wait one year to call another election, unless yesterday's election results are con-
Any complaints must be filed with the state Public Employee Relations Department.
Campaigning for the election began in January when KU-NEA gathered enough faculty signatures to call a union election. Shortly afterward, KU-AAUP gathered enough signatures to also be placed on the ballot. KU Independent Faculty was formed this fall. If neither option had won a majority, a runoff between the two highest vote-getters would have taken place.
"It was incredibly close," said Grant Goodman, KU-AUA member and professor of history. "Unless the University is able to produce the Margin of Excellence, unless it is able to immediately improve the situation of health insurance, underfunding of libraries and laboratories
we'll be back."
From left: Del Shankel, professor of microbiology; Marion "Pat" Bickford, president of KU Independent Faculty and professor of geology; and Earl Schweppe, professor of computer science, look over their tabulations at the end of the vote count. Faculty voted against a union.
Program could be eliminated Personnel major faces official vote
Final Iran-contra report blames the president
By NOEL GERDES
The University of Kansas' personnel administration program may come to an end if the Board of Regents votes to discontinue it at today's meeting.
A Regents staff report says the personnel administration program has been criticized for "lacking in rigor and the quality desired." The report recommends discontinuing the degree as it is now organized. The recommendation would require KU to present alternatives to the personnel administration program by fall 1988.
John Welsh, Regents associate director of academic affairs, said, "What we're trying to do is to reorganize the degree. We want to discontinue the degree in its present form and offer it again later in a different form."
Students in interdisciplinary programs take classes in several different subjects. The departments of political science, psychology, sociology and communications studies all sponsor the personnel administration degree.
Welsh said that if the Regents decided to discontinue the program, students interested in personnel administration in the future might have to major in subjects such as communications and political science and get a concentration in personnel administration.
Also, the recommendation would cut off admissions into the program
About 630 students are taking classes in the personnel administration program this fall. At least 20 faculty members regularly teach classes in the program.
Another option would be to reorganize the program as an undergraduate major in public administration. Welsh said.
The personnel administration program is under review by the Regents this year, as are all other KU interdisciplinary programs.
The Associated Press
See PERSONNEL, p. 6, col. 4
WASHINGTON — President Reagan contributed to a massive deception of Congress and the public in the Iran-contra affair and bears responsibility for thwarting the law by allowing a band of zealots to seize policy control, congressional investigators concluded yesterday.
p. 9.
"These committees found no direct evidence suggesting that the president was a knowing participant in the effort to deceive Congress and the American public," the Senate and House investigating panels wrote. "But the president's actions and statements contributed to the deception.
"The ultimate responsibility for the events in the Iran-contra affair must rest with the president," the panels' 690-page final report concluded. "If the president did not know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have."
The report comes three months after the conclusion of summer-long hearings into the secret sales of U.S. weapons to Iran and the distribution of some profits to the Nicaraguan contras.
At the White House, Reagan's spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, "This new report reflects the subjective opinions and not even the unanimous judgment of the committee."
The report, in one new disclosure, indicates the administration was deceived when, after
concluding that middleman Manucher Ghorbaniar was untrustworthy, it switched to what it saw as a more reliable "second channel" for dealing with Iranian "moderates."
a story it said was laced with lying, deception, excessive and corrosive secrecy, disdain for the law, confusion and disarray, "pervasive dishonesty" and a cover-up marked by the deliberate destruction of thousands of documents.
The report said U.S. operatives were dismayed to discover that the second channel represented the same Iranian leaders as did the first channel. Some U.S. weapons destined for so-called moderates actually went to Iran's radical Revolutionary Guards, and one of the leaders had been killed in kidnappings of at least two of the Americans then being hostage in Lebanon, it said.
The report quoted U.S. officials as saying the discovery "really blew our minds." But it said they voiced no objections to the operation continuing.
"A small group of senior officials believed that they alone knew what was right," the investigating lawmakers said.
The conclusions represented the majority opinion on the two committees, but they were partly
All six Republicans on the House panel and two of the five GOP Senate panel members registered dissent, concluding that the president and his men were guilty of no more than errors of judgment.
The congressional report spells out details of
Faculty has priority over GTAs on salary scale, Ramaley says
Editor's note: This is the last in a three-part series on graduate teaching assistants at the University of Kansas.
KU administrators say they're worried about the low pay graduate teaching assistants receive at the University of Kansas. Some say they aren't comfortable with the larger percentage of KU classes now taught by GTAs.
Today: Administrators are worried about low salaries and benefits. But the future doesn't look much better.
By JENNIFER ROWLAND Staff writer
But a top KU official says maintaining and recruiting faculty is more of a priority for KU, which is strapped for money.
"I want to improve graduate student stipends and to do so as soon as we have resources to accomplish that, because I feel that we should be competitive," said Judith Ramaley, executive vice chancellor.
But Ramaley said faculty salaries were the priority, because to attract the best graduate students, top faculty must be hired also.
See related story p. 6.
"This is a temporary problem. We're already anticipating next year, with enrollment adjustment money, adding more faculty, which will begin to move us back to what I regard as a better ratio of students to faculty, and a better mix of full-time and graduate teaching assistants, part-time," she said.
She said she hoped for more money from the Margin of Excellence proposal and enrollment adjustment money.
"I don't know how much money I will have. And I have to make a tough choice. I would work on the job, but I can't. I can do both." Ramaley said.
"You have to start there, because if you don't have first-rate faculty, then you won't be able to attract good students even if you offer the best stipends in the country because they come to work." said paul.
She said the first wave of repair would occur when KU received enrollment adjustment money, which comes in the budget for fiscal year 1989, which begins July 1.
"That will, by our estimates, restore us about half the distance back to how we were when the earthquake increased began," Rumalev said.
"We anticipate more enrollment
"An important point is that the numbers themselves don't tell you anything about what really happens in the classroom, the quality of instruction. We have to depend on feedback from students and conversations with faculty about that." she said.
And Janet Riley, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, said, "The graduate student stipends are not the oly need the University has."
adjustment money in the following year, and that will complete the repair process," she said.
Ramaley said the increasing number of GTAs at KU did not necessarily mean the quality of instruction was worse.
Riley said KU had presented the low stipend problem to the Legislature.
Howard Baumgartel, associate dean for graduate programs in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said he hoped that in the next few years the college could increase its number of tenure-track faculty.
He said the college was too reliant on state money to support its graduate students and that, in the future, more endowment money and special programs money for fellowships and scholarships would be needed.
Complex could ease sorority housing glut
By VALOREE ARMSTRONG Staff writer
More women pledging KU sororities means a need for more housing and parking space. It also means a dilemma for the city, which must balance those increased housing needs against safety and traffic concerns.
The commission approved the plan, despite strong opposition from some neighbors who were concerned about the increased traffic 344 more students would bring, and the inevitable problem of where to put those students' cars.
Under the new policy, the total number of women participating at the end of the first rush week is 10. Under the same policy, determine the quota each sorority
Panhellenic last year adopted a new pledging policy that encourages sororities to accept a certain number, or quota, of pledges each year. The policy has contributed to an increase in membership in the 14 residential sororites, from 1,900 in January to 2,200 this fall.
should take, said Karen Ohnemus,
Panhellenic adviser and Phoenix
graduate student.
Ohnemus said that Panghilenic didn't force sororites to fill the quota, which was 68 this fall.
"But it was strongly recommended," she said yesterday.
An average sorority can house 70 women, Ohmnesia said. So the 14 houses can accommodate about 980 women now belonging to KU sororities.
Ideally, many sorority women would like to live close to their chapter houses and close to campus.
Enter Shaver Partnership of Salina.
For 16 years, various firms have been trying to develop the site of the old Theta Chi fraternity house. 1003 Emery Road. At Tuesday night's Lawrence City Commission meeting, Shaver Partnership presented a site plan for the area that included 18 new four-plexes and the development of a Tudor home and a duplex on property to the south. The entire complex would accommodate about 344 students and is marketed toward sororities.
The commission approved the plan, despite strong opposition from some neighbors who were concerned about the increased traffic 344 more students would bring, and the inevitable problem of where to put those students' cars.
See SORORITY, p. 6, col. 1