Monday, August 30,1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A • Page 5
Nation
Kansas students use new hot line to report public-school violence
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — As Kansas students return to school this year, they are finding something new in classrooms, a special number to call to report violence in public schools.
The Department of Education recently distributed 30,000 posters to all schools, enough to put one in each classroom. The message: "Stay Safe. Speak Up. Stop School Violence."
In large red numbers is the hot line number: 1-877-628-8203.
The toll-free number can be called anytime and will be answered at the Kansas Highway Patrol's dispatch center in Salina. Callers can remain anonymous.
Violence can be found in just about all of the 304 school districts at various times and in varying degrees. It's something educators want to deal with now rather than later.
"The issue isn't how many you have. The issue is the potential you have. We don't want any violence, and we're going to do everything we can to make the schools
safe," Education Commissioner, Andy Tompkins, said.
Deputy Commissioner Dale Dennis agreed, adding, "If we can save one potential violent situation from happening, it is worth our time and effort. Any is too much."
There are about 470,000 students in Kansas public schools. During the 1989-99 school year, about 7,900 students committed about 9,500 acts of violence on or near school grounds.
While other states have similar projects, Kansas has a unique aspect to its program.
"Some states are doing it, but not exactly like we are with the highway patrol and a live person at the other end all the time. That is the only one we know about like that," said Dennis, who helped put the program together.
Each caller is greeted by a dispatcher trained to handle such calls. The dispatcher has a list of people to call in each school district to pass on any important information.
Most likely, that means a call to the superintendent, who may preside over a sprawling city school system or one with only a single building in a rural setting. Additionally, local law enforcement officials are notified.
VIOLENCE HOT LINE
The new hat line number for Kansas students is 1-877-626-8203.
The number is to report acts of violence by schoolchildren
The number will be until hours a day by the Kansas Highway Patrol's dispatch center in Salina.
"It's truly anonymous, really. There is no way we have of tracking the call, although sometimes the kids aren't afraid to say who they are," said Sgt. Tina Burtzloff, a supervisory dispatcher at Salina.
She said the dispatch center logged 36 hot line calls in its first week.
Of those calls, she said, eight were referred to local officials, including one involving a gun brought to school and another
involving a student's threat to beat up another student.
On such calls, the dispatcher first asks whether the caller wants to give a name. If not, the dispatcher tries to find out the school district and school.
The priority is to determine the type of threat and whether it is imminent, plus getting as many specifics as possible.
But not every call has been about violence.
Burtzloff said dispatchers had gotten calls from some students who wanted to know whether the call was free, whether the number was for real and whether it was truly anonymous.
There also have been calls from children who were afraid because they were home alone or were going through a personal crisis. Burtzloff said no caller is turned away.
"We are going to do the best we can to help. We are humans and parents, too," she said. "Obviously there is a need for a place for kids to call and right now we are taking those calls."
New book maps out famous fictional locales
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON— Anyone who wants to pinpoint where James Bond met that blonde with the bottle of champagne on her curvy hip need only consult "Language of the Land," an unusual book published by the Library of Congress, which offers maps of imaginary places.
Another map shows just where Tom Sawyer whitewashed his famous fence. Still another points out the spot at which Paul Bunyan's ox Babe, trying to catch a field mouse, dug the Mammoth Cave.
L. Frank Baum's "Wonderful World of O2" is charted, Illustrator Dick
Martin located the Shifting Sands and Deadly Desert, with Emerald City and Gunda's Palace smack in the middle. A Yellow Brick Road is there too, though it's not clearly labeled.
Most literary maps, wrote coauthor Martha Hopkins, are not drawn to scale and contain little detailed information on topography, geology, towns, rivers or roads.
Still, some of the places are real enough. Author Ian Fleming made his James Bond stories credible by searching out authentic settings for what the library calls his "assignments and assignations." Only "Agent 007" and his exploits sprang from Fleming's imagination.
J. R.R. Tolkien's completely imaginary "Middle Earth" rates three highly detailed maps.
Somewhere-between reality and imagination lies Mark Twain's St. Petersburg, the home of Tom Sawyer, modeled on Hannibal. Mo. That's where the young Sam Clemens lived before he went piloting on the Mississippi, where he got his pen name.
The half-whitewashed fence is on St. Petersburg's Hill Street, just across from Becky Thatcher's house.
"There ain't anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has talked about," Twain quotes Tom as saying in later life.
"Language of the Land" describes and reproduces the fantastic maps, along with many others covering the literary landscape. It was compiled by Hopkins of the library's Interpretive Programs Office and Michael Buscher of the Geography and Map Division.
Maps from days when Latin and Greek got more intensive study show the voyages of Odysseus and Aeneas. Even troubled Balkan politics gets touched on — unintentionally. A map on places in Hungarian literature includes portions of Romania which once belonged to Hungary, and which many Hungarians would dearly like to get back.
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