The KU volleyball team will face UMKC in its home opener. 10A
Kerry Meier is calm, cool and collected about his role as quarterback this season despite the pressure that comes along with the job.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2006
WWW.KANSAN.COM
VOL.117 ISSUE 10
10A
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
10
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 1A
GREEK LIFE
Council hosts week of unity, recruitment
BY COURTNEY HAGEN
Thursday, August 31
NPHC Basketball Tournament
6:00pm Robinson Center
Friday, September 1
Community Service with Boys and Girls Club
6:00pm Kansas Union Jaybowl
The National Panhellenic Council at the University of Kansas will use the coming week to promote unity on campus and recruit new members.
calendar
Tuesday, August 29
NPHC Fall Informational
7:00pm Burge Union Gridiron
Room
Wednesday, August 30
Game Night
9:00pm Ellsworth Hall
Saturday, September 2
Neophyte Retreat (Closed to public)
10.00am Burge Union Olympian Room
Source: DeAndrea Herron, NPHC public relations chairwoman
The week will be filled with celebrations, get-togethers and informational meetings to promote the council, recruit new members and celebrate the friendship and community engagement of the historically African-American and Hispanic-American fraternities and sororites that compose the council.
B. J. McIntosh, Wichita senior, and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, has participated in NPHC Week events for the past two years and said he was looking forward to increasing the council's visibility on campus this year.
"There is a lot of unity and support from chapters even though we're individually incorporated," McIntosh said. "It is more than just wearing letters. We're like a family."
The council will host events like an informational meeting on Tuesday night at the Burge Union, a game night on Wednesday, a basketball tournament on Thursday at Robinson Center and a community service event for the Boys and Girls Club on Friday.
The events are designed to celebrate the diversity and opportunity within the University's youngest greek chapter organization.
SEE COUNCIL ON PAGE 4A
So fresh and so clean
Mindy Ricketts/KANSAN
Patrick Hunninghake, Falls Church, Va. freshman, brings his clothes back to newly-renovated Hashinger Hall Sunday afternoon after washing them in the laundry room at Ellsworth Hall. The construction on Hashinger is almost complete, but the laundry room, dining facilities and some practice rooms are not expected to be available until next week.
weather
79 57
TODAY
WEDNESDAY 82 58
Mostly sunny
THURSDAY 85 62
Sunny
Isolated storms
—weather.com
index
Classifieds. . . . 7A
Crossword. . . . 5A
Horoscopes. . . . 5A
Opinion. . . . 6A
Sports. . . . 10A
Sudoku. . . . 5A
$A^0$ constants, unless stated otherwise,
©2006The University Daily Kansan
From campus editor, Catherine Odson:
My high-school color guard was listening to the radio before rehearsal and heard a few words about a plane crash. After some fine-tuning, we learned about the first tower. We tried to rehearse anyway, but spent most of rehearsal trying to comprehend what happened. When the band came back in from the field an hour later, most of them thought we were joking. The joke ended when we went to our next class, turned on the TV and sat motionless watching the news coverage. Go to Kansan.com/Sept 11 to share your story
Taking a stab
Where were you on September 11?
Alexander Laqua, Freiburg, Germany exchange student, foreground left, and Jeff O'Neill, Lawrence junior, practice with the fencing club during practice Sunday. The fencing club meets from 8:45 to 10:45 p.m. every Sunday in the Student Fitness and Recreation Center. Participants pay $25 each semester to cover the cost of the facilities, equipment and instruction. No experience is necessary to join the group. For more information, visit the group's Web site, www.ku.edu/~fencing.
Vanessa Pearson/KANSAN
KANSAS LEGISLATURE
The legislators Barbara Ballard Paul Davis Tom Sloan
The scores Ballard: 99%, Davis: 98%, Sloan: 100%
The criteria:
Tuition Interest Ownership, Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, other issues
Why it matters: Representatives voted in favor of issues that benefited students.
Three Lawrence Representatives score well on higher education report card
BY ERIN CASTANEDA
Group grades Reps' voting history
Three Kansas Representatives from Lawrence have made it onto The Kansas Citizens for Higher Education Inc. honor roll.
The organization issued a higher-education report card last month that ranked representatives based on their votes in the 2005 and 2006 Kansas House sessions.
Democrats Barbara Ballard and Paul Davis and Republican Tom Sloan all scored at least 98 percent. The Lawrence representatives' rankings put them ahead of 76 other legislators; 56 legislators received failing grades.
Issues were ranked from low to high priority and then the representatives who voted on those issues were identified. Representatives were given one to three points for low-priority issues, such as community college contracts. Five points were given for issues of high priority, such as
Tuition Interest Ownership.
All three representatives received five points for voting in favor of the Tuition Interest Ownership, the Stem Cell Amendment and the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights "Light." These three issues were considered some of the most important to the Citizens for Higher Education.
The Tuition Interest Ownership, or Senate Bill 85, was passed last session and will take affect July 1, 2007.
This bill will allow Kansas universities to keep about $8.5 million of tuition interest that before had been transferred to a state general fund.
According to the Kansas Legislative Research Department, the state's general fund is approximately $5.5 billion for the 2006 fiscal year.
Lindy Eakin, vice provost for Administration and Finance, said the estimated 2005 interest earned for the University was about $2.1
Eakin said after maintenance was paid for, the extra money could help lower tuition in the future.
million. That money will now be transferred to the state treasury and then credited back to the University. The legislature granted the University the money to be used toward deferred campus maintenance in 2008.
Representative Sloan proposed an amendment last spring in a House floor debate that would put tuition interest toward scholarships; the amendment failed. He said a lot of time legislators didn't understand the value of the University to the state as a whole.
"If the University is supposed to be self-funding, the interest ownership makes sense," Sloan said.
Bill Musgrave, Citizens for Higher Education staff director, said the report card was crucial for evaluating economic prosperity in the state. Areas with a strong infrastructure in higher education would create jobs in the future, he said.
"KU is clearly the leader in the state, but in many ways each university has their area of expertise," Musgrave said.
He said the University of Kansas Medical Center was important as well as the School of Business, which, he said, taught students how to develop their own companies.
Musgrave encouraged students, parents, faculty and staff to look at the report card before the November general election to see how their representatives voted.
The report card is available at http://www.kansashighereducation.org.
Kansan staff writer Erin Castaneda can be contacted at ecastaneda@kansan.com.
Edited by Nicole Kelley
CRIME
KU student charged with rape of McCollum resident
BY DAVID LINHARDT
An 18-year-old KU student was charged yesterday with raping a 19-year-old McCollum Hall resident.
Arrin Bernard, Overland Park freshman, made his first appearance in Douglas County court yesterday to answer one charge of rape. Bond was set at $15,000 and Bernard's preliminary hearing is Sept. 6.
Bernard was unavailable for comment.
Capt. Schuyler Bailey, KU Public
Safety spokesman, said the rape occurred in a McCollum residence hall room and that the victim was an acquaintance of the suspect's roommate.
Several friends of the victim and suspect were present while the rape occurred, though some fell asleep or left at different times of the night, and alcohol was a factor in the incident, Bailey said.
The group spent Saturday night partying before returning early Sunday morning to McCollum Hall.
The suspect left the room and was found by KU Public Safety officers after 10 a.m. Sunday.
The victim suffered minor injuries and police initially contacted her at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. She was released Sunday.
No rapes were reported to the Public Safety office in 2005. This one is the second reported rape in 2006 though rape is generally an under-reported crime, according to the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
4.
As many as 58 percent of raps go unreported to police, according to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. About half of rape victims are acquainted with their attackers.
4
According to the network, a woman is sexually assaulted every two and a half minutes in the United States.
Kansan staff writer David Linhardt can be contacted at dlinhardt@kansan.com.
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Edited by Aly Barland
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