Wednesday, August 26, 1998
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 3
Student Senate seeks committee members
Joining system offers chances to impact campus
By Soth Jones
Kansan staff writer
Deadline to join a Student Senate committee is Friday, and members of Senate hope for their best turnout ever.
Student Senate President Kevin Yoder and Vice President Scott
Kaiser have been campaigning to get more students involved in the committee system. By posting signs around campus, speaking to residence halls and distributing 1,000 fliers, they hope to have as many students involved in the workings of Senate as possible.
"The more students that are involved, the better job of representing the opinion of KU students," Yoder said. "The committee system as a whole is the groundwork of a successful year of Student Senate."
Students do not have to be elected Senate to serve on a committee.
Students who decide to join are obligated to meet at the Kansas Union every other Wednesday. The first meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 2, in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
To sign up for a committee, students can stop by the Student Senate office on the 4th floor of the Kansas Union to fill out an application, on which they should list their top two committee choices. The committee options are finance, graduate affairs, multicultural affairs, student rights and university affairs. Students will find out
COMMITTEES
Deadline for application is Friday.
First meeting: 6 p.m. Sept. 2 in the Kansas Union Ballroom
which committee they are on when they attend the first meeting.
Aaron Profit, vice chairman of the university affairs committee, joined a committee last year as a freshman.
"It's your first opportunity, as a freshman or anyone, to make an actual impact on KU," he said. "We deal with over $1 million, and it's important to know where it goes."
Sarah Yannaccone, student rights committee member, feels that it is important to know what is going on in Senate.
"So much happens on Senate that students don't know about. Committees meet on such things as add/drop, advising, student rights, finance and so on. You can learn so much about the University this way."
Korb Maxwell, legislative director of Senate, said that attendance was usually good at the first committee meeting but that then it suffered a drop-off.
"We usually get a ton of students at the first informational meeting, but then some people decide it's not for them, so they stop coming," he said. "But this year, we're going to keep it fun and upbeat, and if they're like me, they get the hook in them after two meetings."
Yoder said the first meeting would be an orientation.
"We're going to tell everyone how student senate works; we'll go over basic legislation; we'll try to get people to meet each other; and we'll tell them how they can be involved," he said.
Support system assists minorities
By Steph Brower
Kansan staff writer
When Yasmeen Coleman, Kansas City, Kan., junior, first came to the University of Kansas in 1992, she felt lost. Because she was a minority student at a predominantly white university, she searched for a support system but did not find one.
Eventually, Coleman left the University. This year she is back and is determined to make a difference. By starting a chapter of the National Council of Negro Women, Coleman hopes to give the University's African-American women the support system she did not have as a freshman.
She said she wanted to regain an African-American community that had diminished in the years since her siblings were students.
But Coleman did not find that community.
"My brothers and sisters went here in the early '80s, and there were a lot more African-American students," she said. "They were a community."
"When I first came in 1992, there were only 600 African Americans, and we are losing African Americans at an alarming rate," she said. "College is hard, and at 18 years old, I was not ready for this."
Coleman said she hoped that NCNW would help freshmen deal with the pressure.
So far, about 50 women have signed up as potential members of the KU chapter, and the organization has gained an adviser, Danielle Dempsey-Swopes, associate director at the Equal Opportunity Office.
The non-profit organization was founded in 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and government consultant. It is supported by 38 nationally affiliated organizations and has 250 community-based sections.
I am a member of a historically Black Greek organization, and it has really helped me, especially in my college years, but I understand it's not for everybody," Dempsey-Swopes said.
FIRST MEETING
6 p.m.
Sept. 3
Daisy Hill Room in the Burge
Union
She said NCNW had the benefits of an African-American sorority without the obligations and academic requirements.
"It's like a sorority, but looser," she said.
Coleman sees the organization as something that will unite African-American women on campus. One of the programs she wants to start is a mentoring program involving students and professional African-American women.
"These women know the struggle." Coleman said.
Through the mentoring program, students could begin networking for internships and jobs, she said.
"We need to know these women," she said. "We're all after the same goal."
Coleman also plans to hold economic and empowerment seminars, a women's leadership retreat, an African-American literary group and AIDS- and breast cancer-awareness programs.
Vanassa Robinson, Kansas City, Kan., sophomore, said a group such as NCNW was needed on campus.
"I think it will help us to come together and learn more about ourselves as Black women," she said.
The small population of African-American women creates the need for unity, she said.
ates the need for unity, she said. "We don't get to voice our opinion as much," she said. "We're not asked. We're not represented."
Coleman said African-American women needed to put aside problems and work together.
"Even though we may have differences,we should all have a common goal to uplift people," she said.
NCNW will hold its first informational meeting at 6 p.m. Sept. 3 at the Daisy Hill Room in the Burge Union.
By Angola Johnson
Kansan staff writer
Move aside art gallery. Here comes Commerce Bank.
New bank displaces art gallery
Since last spring, students knew they would be carrying the new KUID with the smart chip this year. Now, a branch of the Commerce Bank and the KU Card Center are settling into their new home on the fourth level of the Kansas Union, displacing the Student Union Activities' art gallery.
Commerce Bank, KUID center force Union realignment
gallery Jim Long, director of the Kansas and Burge Unions, said the bank and the card center should be complete by Friday. For now, Commerce Bank is operating from tables on the Union's fourth floor and the center is temporarily in the television lounge.
Once the bank and card center is complete, the art gallery will move permanently into the television lounge.
The television lounge now is in the Union's Jawbow.
The art gallery move had prompted some adjustments, said Kielyn Scott, SUA president.
"The TV lounge will be our new art gallery," Scott said. "We can't have any exhibits in the gallery until it's complete. That's why
"Our first exhibit is scheduled for September. If the gallery isn't complete, we have to use the display cases in the Union," she said.
"It was never our attempt to displace anyone," Miles said. "We looked at other buildings, and we thought the Kansas Union was a good central location."
Nancy Miles, KUID administrator, said the main objective of adding a bank to the union was to provide convenience for students.
Mary Ann Graham, KU Card Center manager, said that having Commerce Bank and the center share a location made it convenient for students who have an account set up on their cards.
"With a bank on campus, you can get your card and open your account in the same place," Graham said.
we've been having our poster sale in the lobby instead of the gallery.
Long said in past surveys students expressed a need for a fullservice bank on campus.
When phase three of the Kansas Union renovations take place, Long said the art gallery would be expanded.
"In addressing the temporary nature of the gallery, we look to expand our facilities," Long said. "It's our commitment to continuing the art gallery program. We have plans to accommodate the gallery in the next phase of our renovations."
Jim
Rourke,
from
Diebold
Inc., puts
in a security
system
for the
new Commerce
Bank in the Kansas Union. The bank will
open later this fall in the area
formerly occupied by the Student Union Activities' art gallery.
PH
C
A
Club to take objective look at Ayn Rand
By Pallavi Agarwal
Kansan staff writer
The works of controversial writer and philosopher Ayn Rand, who penned The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, may not be studied extensively at the University of Kansas, but a group of KU students is doing precisely that.
nree students have started the Ayn Rand Objectivist Club to better understand the author's writings and spread her philosophy of Objectivism, said Marta Erazmus, president of the club.
The club's first event is a video presentation, introducing RAND the phil-
losophy of reason, egoism, individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, which she broadly called Objectivism.
The video will be shown at 7:30 tonight at Alcove G in the Kansas Union.
Her philosophy of rugged individualism is considered controversial because it professes total individual freedom and is considered dangerous in certain fields like politics, said Charles Masington, professor in English said.
"Cultural studies are often done comparing Objectivism to fascist movements like Hitler's," he said.
Masington, who teaches modern
CLUB EVENT
Ayn Rand Objectivist Club's first event
What: Video presentation
When: 7:30 tonight
Where: Alcove G at the Kansas
Union
American literature, said that Rand relatively was forgotten in academi-
But what is indigestible to some is fodder to others.
Erazmus is drawn to Rand'd belief in man as the superachleaver.
"In her writings, she portrays man as a heroic person and makes you feel that it is possible to succeed irrespective of whatever comes your way. Erazmus said.
Others are drawn to the following she commands and the institutions named after her.
"Her philosophical view is certainly original even if extreme, and she certainly has a good following in campuses around the country," said Kristi Bisel, Overland Park senior, who recently up for the club.
Group discussions about how her ideas relate to campus and world issues will take place, Erazmus said.
"I know that while several students may not have read her extensively, they are in a mood to find something more," Erazmus said.
Kansas State Historic Sites Board appointee takes her job seriously
By Chad Bottos Kansan staff writer
Mary Adair takes her job on the Kansas State Historic Sites Board of Review seriously.
After all, her office is housed in one of the University of Kansas' own national historic sites.
Anaur, associate curator for the Museum of Anthropology in Spooner Hall, recently appointed by Gov. Bill Graves to a
"The governor selected Adair because she remained highly recommended by the state historical preservation community, those in the field," said Angela Goering, communications director for Graves.
three-year appointment on the board.
The main purpose of the board is to review nominations of properties across Kansas for inclusion on the State and National Register of Historic Places, Adair said.
"We have a pretty straight forward mission to objectively examine nominations that come to the board," Adair said. "I will do my best to serve in the capacity I was appointed to."
Adair said she was pleased to have another term to serve after completing the last two years of a vacated seat on the nine-member board.
The board meets twice annually and works in conjunction with the
Goering said the board also fulfilled a requirement by the National Park Service that a state have a historic sites board to qualify for federal historic preservation funds.
Kansas State Historical Society.
Examples of Kansas properties on the registers include Spooner Hall, Strong Hall and original courthouses and Carnegie libraries around the state.
The properties considered by the
board are not limited to buildings. They also include statues, archeological sites or a group of properties designated together as a historic district.
The Historic Sites Board is set up so members have varying areas of expertise. Adair's specialty is historic archeology. Her research focus has been ethnobotany, the study of the use of plants by people, primarily in the Midwest.
"I would like to see more archeol
ogy sites nominated for the registers. Adair said, "They are not as visible, but they are no less important to our history."
Adair received a doctorate degree in anthropology from the University in 1984. She has been employed by the museum since 1989, where she is responsible for management of archeological collections and for ensuring that University collections are maintained for scholastic and public use.
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Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
Questions? Call Sean at 864-8243
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