THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2004
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7A
KU History Web site growing in popularity, content
BY LAURA FRANCVIGLIA
francviglia@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WINTER
A history panel for Elizabeth M. Watkins and articles about the boys of Sterling-Oliver Hall (SOBs) and the first Kansan to go into space are among the new additions to the KU History project.
Henry Fortunato, project director and editor, and his team launched 25 new articles for kuhistory.com and talked yesterday about 10 new panels, which will be built by Fall 2005 for the Kansas Union.
The new articles were underwritten by the KU Endowment Association, Department of Student Housing and the Historic Mount Oread Fund.
Brian Lewis/KANSAN
Fortunato said underwriting support for each of the articles ranged from $1,000 to $1,600. The cost covers all expenses involved, including research, writing, editing, imagery and the pro-rated cost of managing the Web site.
November 2002, has grown to 148 articles. Fortunato's long-term goal is to see the Web site grow to 300 articles.
Student Senate allocated $15,000 in September to create 10 more panels for the Kansas Union.
The Web site won a Phoenix Award — a local award for the arts — in November.
The KU History project began four years ago when Fortunato earned his master's degree in history at the University. Under his guise, the kuhistory.com Web site, which was launched
Henry Fortunato speaks at a KU History luncheon yesterday at the Big 12 Room in the Kansas Union. The luncheon promoted KU History's updated Web site and the museum-style panels displayed on the third floor of the Kansas Union.
plete them all now she said. ries behind the students who online gallery whi
David Mucci, director of KU Memorial Unions, said the KU History Web site had 500,000 page views in 120 countries since it began and the trend was accelerating.
Lauren Grieb, Overland Park part-time student and graphics coordinator for the KU Memorial Unions, said the KU History project acted as a family photo album for the University.
"These are our ancestors and relatives," she said.
Fortunato said he had seen a bond among people associated with the University.
He said he hadn't found the reason, but he had seen a hunger for the history of the University from Jawhaws.
Fortunato said the KU History project did not sugarcoat the truth of KU's history.
"It's not 'rah rah KU,' and it doesn't whitewash stories," he said.
Grieb said the KU History project could continue in many different directions. There are more stories that can actually be produced because the project doesn't have the funds to com-
The University's athletics history is largely missing from the project, Grieb said. She said athletics were important because outsiders identified it with the University.
"In the rest of the country, KU is known 50 percent for sports and 50 percent for academics,"
Fortunato said he had future plans for the project. He plans to revitalize the purpose of the Kansas Memorial Union — to remember the 129 KU students who died in World War I. The WWI dedication on the sixth floor of the Kansas Union will allow passersby to learn the stories behind the students who died in the war.
He said because the nation is dealing with war now, learning about the past might bring more understanding of how wars' begin and as a preventative measure to future wars.
Another new component of the project is an interactive
online gallery, which would rely more on images than words.
Fortunato explained the KU History project as "a hybrid of scholarly approaches and scholarly methods packaged in a way that represents the best of a magazine article."
Ukraine opposition gains strength
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Edited by Jon Ralston
Efrem Lukatsky/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's supporters stand in front of the parliament in Kiev, Ukraine's parliament passed a vote of no-confidence yesterday, bringing down the prime minister's government.
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine's opposition scored key victories yesterday in its bid to scrap a disputed presidential election as parliament voted no confidence in the government and European-brokered talks provided momentum toward holding a new ballot.
tun toward holding a new leader Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko urged throngs of supporters to stay on the streets until his plans — a rerun of the Nov. 21 runoff with Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych — were worked out. He said such a vote could be held as early as Dec. 19.
But President Leonid Kuchma, who backed Yanukovych, instead proposed an entirely new election, which would allow his Russian-allied government to field a more attractive candidate as it scrambled to stay in power with his 10 years in office running out.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana also suggested a new vote but didn't indicate whether it would be a repeat of the runoff or a new election. Kuchma, who earlier in the day called the idea of a new runoff "a farce," also left the issue unclear.
The two candidates signed a deal to set up a group of lawyers to work out proposals for the "completion of the election," a reference to drafting legislation for a settlement of the dispute. The statement also urged protesters to lift their siege of official buildings that have paralyzed the government's work — but Yushchenko urged his backers to press ahead with their street protests.
"Our ranks mustn't shrink," Yushchenko told tens of thousands of his supporters who gathered on Kiev's central
Independence Square for the 11th straight night since the 'election commission declared his rival the winner in a vote he says was stolen. "We mustn't leave until we have a revote date firmly set."
signed, throngs of Yushchenko's supporters continued to besiege the Cabinet and the presidential administration buildings, while thousands clad in his orange campaign colors crammed the central square under fireworks and listened to rock bands.
Hours after the deal was
Yushchenko said he expected the Supreme Court to deliver a ruling today on his campaign's appeal to invalidate the runoff result — based on claims of widespread violations.
Yanukovych has tried to counterattack by launching his own appeal contesting the vote results in pro-Yushchenko western provinces and the capital, but it wasn't immediately clear when the court would address it.
The opposition has asked the court to declare Yushchenko the winner based on his narrow edge in the election's first round, on Oct. 31. But his call for a revote suggested he does not believe the court would pronounce him the winner.
Yushchenko has led the opposition for its years and was long seen as its candidate in a country where millions are yearning for change after Kuchma's 10-year rule. Kuchma anointed Yanukovych as his favored successor last spring, hoping his prominence as prime minister would attract votes.
In the first round of voting, Yushchenko edged Yanukovych by less than a percentage point, but fell short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
AIDS campaign behind schedule
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA — Nearly a million Americans now have the AIDS virus and the nation's ability to keep others from becoming infected still lags despite a government pledge four years ago to "break the back" of the AIDS epidemic by 2005.
The campaign, launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February 2001, intended to cut in half the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections that have occurred every year since the 1990s.
However, the rate of new cases remains about the same, according to CDC data released yesterday as part of the federal health agency's commemoration of World AIDS Day.
"We have a ways to go before we reach the mark of reducing new infections by half in the United States," said Dr. Ronald Dalisherri, the director of the CDC HIV and AIDS prevention program. He called the country's HIV infection rate "relatively stable."
"Clearly we want to continue, and are continuing, to fund programs to reach out to people who are high-risk and are not infected." he added.
In 2001, the CDC's campaign focused on outwardly healthy people who did not realize they
had HIV — about one-fourth of those infected. Officials then said targeting them was key, because if they knew they were infected, they would be more likely to take steps not to spread the virus.
Such an effort "could possibly break the back of the epidemic in the United States," the CDC's Dr. Robert Janssen said then.
But the agency found that just targeting people who didn't know they had the AIDS virus was not enough. So last year, the CDC shifted gears, focusing on counseling those who knew they had HIV in an attempt to get them not to spread the virus.
Yet some advocacy groups say that effort fails to focus on drug users, or very sexually active young men, which advocacy groups say is key in preventing new infections.
The CDC believes up to 950,000 people in the United States are infected with HIV and up to 280,000 of them don't know it. Valdiserri said.
The rate of HIV diagnoses in the United States increased slightly — by 1 percent — between 2000 and 2003, from 19.5 people per 100,000 population to 19.7 per 100,000 in the 32 states surveyed by the CDC.
Advocacy groups blame a lack of federal money for part of the failure to make a dent in the HIV rate.