Tomorrow's weather
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Cloudy skies with a cold front moving through in the evening
Kansan
Online today
Thursday
October 29, 1998
Section:
A
Vol. 109 • No. 49
Looking for newspaper Web sites from anywhere in the country. The AJR News Link page can connect you to any paper you want. http://air.newslink.org/news.html
Sports today
A lack of nation-wide respect was the main topic of conversation yesterday at the Big 12 Women's Basketball Media Day.
WWW.KANSAN.COM
SEE PAGE 1B
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Campus gets lights punched out
Blown transformer causes power loss, triggers fire alarms
By Steph Brewer and Keith Burner
Kansas staff writers
Lights were flickering across the University of Kansas campus yesterday afternoon, but it had nothing to do with Halloween.
A blown transformer at 19th and Louisiana streets caused about half of the buildings on campus to lose power, said Bob Porter, associate director of facilities operations. Buildings lost power about 1:30 p.m.
(USPS 650-640)
Porter said he did not know what specifically caused the problem. Representatives from Kansas Power and Light were not available for comment. Douglas County Fire Battalion Chief
Douglas County Fire Battalion Chief Bill Stark blamed nature.
"I don't know if it was lightning or the wind or some other part of the storm." he said.
The outage set off fire alarms in some of the buildings, sending fire trucks screaming across campus.
Some buildings only experienced loss of power, while other buildings such as Dyche Hall, where the Natural History Museum is located, had more serious problems.
At Dyche, Haworth and Twente
halls, elevator motors malfunctioned and sent smoke wafting through the buildings, causing firefighters to revisit the halls.
"A motor overheated, causing smoke in the ventilation ducts," said Jordan Yochim, assistant director of the Natural History Museum. "That smoke caused the detectors to go off a second time."
In Dyche Hall, a construction worker was trapped in an elevator 1 1/2 feet below the fourth floor but exited through the escape hatch at the top.
The building only lost power in the south wing, not the north wing, where the preserved animal specimens are kept. Yochim said.
Enrollment took longer than usual for some students who were waiting in line during the outage. Jan Gentry, an enrollment aide, said that the computers didn't crash but that the printers lost power.
"That was the big thing," she said. "We couldn't print anyone's schedule."
Gentry said that, despite the delay,
she did not think any students left.
Sunny Alexander, Kansas City, Mo., senior, and Eve Lane, St. Louis sophomore, were in Watson Library when the power went out.
"It wasn't completely dark. Not everything shut off" Alexander said.
Lane and Alexander said that when they left the library, lights were on but computers were still down. Later in the afternoon, all power was restored.
Firefighters from the Lawrence Fire Department exit Dyche Hall after investigating reports of smoke on the seventh floor. A blown transformer knocked out power in several buildings on campus yesterday. The smoke was caused by an electric motor affected by the outage. Photo by Graham K. Johnson/KANSAN
Student body vice president's job questioned
Letter of complaint signed by six senators.
Kansan staff writer
Bv Seth Jones
A mysteriously delivered letter to Scott Kaiser, student body vice president, turned out to be a serious letter from six members of Student Executive Committee questioning his performance as vice president.
The letter was hand-delivered to Kaiser by a person he did not know during last night's Student Senate committee meeting. StudEx is a 13-member standing committee that approves the agenda for each Senate meeting.
The letter stated Kaiser had disregarded what StudEx said, claimed he had not been serving his office hours and raised general leadership questions.
Partha Mazundar, graduate senator; Seth
Hoffman, Nunemaker senator; Amy Cummins, graduate senator; Matt Dunbar, holdover senator; Jason Thompson, senior senator; and Luke Pfannenstiel, all-scholarship-hall senator, all signed the letter.
Dunbar said the purpose of the letter was to alert Kaiser of the complaints.
Kaiser: Faces questions about his job performance.
"We knew that people had problems with the
way he was performing." he said. "We wanted this to remain private. It wasn't intended to be news. We just wanted to be sure he knew the problems existed."
Kaiser said that he was only going to address the letter once and that it would be at next Wednesday's StudEx meeting.
"I'm not really worried about it," he said.
"I'm going to make sure that everyone who signed the letter is present before I comment on it. That way we can talk about it once with everybody face to face."
Kevin Yoder, student body president, said he was not pleased with the manner the letter was presented to Kaiser.
"The letter was given to him anonymously," he said. "Some guy he didn't even know walked up to him and said 'You Scott Kaiser?' and then he handed him the letter."
Yoder said that the complaints stated in the letter were exaggerated, revealing the writer's true intentions.
"This was nothing more than leftover coalition politics from last spring," he said. "Starting a meeting 10 minutes late isn't a high crime. What these people are trying to do is smear his vice presidency, and it's tarmpished their own image in the process."
Deidre Backs, off-campus senator, said she had talked to Kaiser about the problems.
"he rolls his eyes when certain people are speaking, he's extremely biased, he disrespectful to other senators," she said. "It's sad it's come to this, but people have asked him to change many times, and he hasn't changed at all."
Maria Abatjoglou, college of liberal arts and science senator, said that Kaiser's work ethic made her think he was doing a good job.
"We've been working together a lot on campus recreation," she said. "We've spent many hours working together, and I know he has spent many hours working on his own."
Mazumdar stressed that the StudEx members who signed the letter just wanted to talk about the problems.
"This is unfortunate, but it's something we had to do," he said. "We just want to talk. That is stated very clear in the letter."
More about Student Senate Senators question Democratic congressional candidate Dennis Moore. See page 3A
Rain relay
Students scramble across the lawn in front of Stouffer-Flint Hall to get out of the rain. A short but heavy storm hit Lawrence yesterday drenched building. Photo by Graham K. Johnson/KANSAN
Fraternities contend for spot at University
By Sarah Hale
Kansan staff writer
Representatives from two national fraternities gave formal presentations to a greek expansion committee yesterday.
The proposals came after 15 years of consideration and two years after the committee sent
After wading through the responses, the 13 member
applications is more than 40 national fraternities
expansion committee of greek students and advisers narrowed the selection to Delta Sigma Phi and Pi Kappa Phi.
"A new group on campus would add a new flavor to the entire greek community," said Wes Simons, assistant director of greek programs. "When you don't have anybody new for awhile, people get set in their ways. Hopefully, this would
open up fresh ideas."
See FRATERNITIES on page 2A
"With the size of KU, we are definitely able to handle another chapter on campus," said Lung
The last time a new fraternity colonized at the University was Zeta Beta Tau, 1003 Emery Road, in 1984. In 1988, Phi Kappa Tau, 1100 Indiana St., recolonized, 40 years after it initially was chartered.
Huang . .
Interfraternity Council
vice president
for public relations.
"It
Right now, there are 25 active KU fraternities, including those from the Interfraternity Council and the National Pan-Hellenic Council.
PI KAPRA PHI FRATERNITY
Although both fraternities have given formal presentations, their files and written statements will continue to be
will only help the campus be more diverse."
Class work descriptions now posted on Web site
By Melody Ard
Kansan staff writer
The only change on the Web site for the spring semester is the classification of course topics that fall into the categories of
Students enrolling for next semester have the option of checking the University's course Web site for information about classes they are interested in.
The Web site includes course descriptions as well as information about grading policies and teaching styles that are posted by professors. The Web site was created in March.
multicultural, research, service learning and international focus.
COURSE WEB SITE
http://www.ukans edu/~content/
More than 300 classes are posted. Of these, more than half have been updated for the Spring semester.
Professors of more than 300 different classes have provided course descriptions and information about grading policies and teaching styles.
The Web site was created as a compromise between Scott Sullivan, last
Korb Maxwell, College of Liberal Arts senator, said the Web page was considered an acceptable compromise, but Sullivan didn't give faculty or students much time to consider the original plan. Maxwell said that Sullivan upset faculty by trying to force a decision too quickly.
"This is such a touchy issue," he said. "No one wanted to make it their rallying cry."
year's student body president, and faculty. Sullivan wanted to publish faculty evaluations, as well as create a book with information about each course offered in the timetable that students would have access to. Faculty senators rejected the idea.
Maxwell said class information could have been better organized or presented if the parties involved would have had more time to consider the proposal.
"The plan needed to be built through a consensus and moved through the student and faculty senate," he said. "Even if you have a perfect plan, the faculty flip out if they don't have time to think about it. This is a bureaucracy and things have to move slowly."
"The compromise struck was this. We are happy to see it, but we still think it could have been better," he said.
Richard Hardin, English professor, said students had not responded to the information he had posted but thought the Web site would be more widely used if more students were aware that it existed.
How departments use the Web site will vary. Hardin said that he hoped the English department would eventually use it to save materials handed out in class.
"I think it will take a while for students to use it," Hardin said. "This saves on paper, and maybe in the future our department will do all the class syllabuses on the Internet."
He said Student Senate had not come up with any specific improvements, because no senators wanted to tackle the issue.
Donna Tucker, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, said the University could increase student awareness by publicizing the Web site on University documents.
They could possibly include information about the Web site when students get their permits to enroll," she said. "The Web site address could be put in places where students already look for information."
Jessica Buntain, Topeka freshman, said she found the site during an Internet search for general information about colleges last year.
She said she found the class information after she accessed the University Web site.
"It helped me in my college search," she said. "I don't have a computer now, but I would use the site if I did."