THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN FRIDAY, AUGUST 24. 2007
NEWS
5A
ACADEMICS
Task force may reduce gen eds
BY COURTNEY CONDRON
ccondron@kansan.com
A task force of faculty and students recommended a decrease in the number of required general education hours for undergraduates.
Currently, students have to complete 72 general education hours, but with the new recommendations, the task force is targeting about 60 required hours.
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Joseph Steinmetz appointed the members of the task force.
"I think 60 is about average for
most state institutions around here and around the country," Steinmetz said. "We would like to see more flexibility for students by having the ability to pursue minors and double majors easier."
The task force decided on this number last spring. It could still change because the proposal still has to pass through two levels before becoming final.
"We require more general education hours than all of our peers," said Chris Crandall, a task force member and psychology professor. "The school has grown with no one to say that we can grow, but we also need to trim."
Crandall said the structure of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will still be the same, but requiring fewer hours would help more students graduate in four years. He said the requirement of 124 total credit hours would likely remain in place.
"These are small tweaks to make things smoother, faster and easier," Crandall said. "We don't want people hanging around here over four years, because it was hard to get their required hours in, or because they didn't take enough required hours freshman year."
A method for going about reducing the number of required hours
has not been decided yet.
"There are a lot of different ways that this can be done," Steinmetz said. "We have to figure out what is the best way, and still deliver a rounded education."
Crandall said the important thing is to make the system more efficient without sacrificing quality.
"These kind of changes are fairly small," Crandall said. "But they could be enough to get a good percentage of students done in four years instead of four and a half or five, and that would be great."
- Edited by Kyle Carter
PROTESTS
Activists rally for farm workers' wages
BY SASHA ROE
sroe@kansan.com
Lawrence activists will "have it their way" when they march to the three local Burger King restaurants on Saturday. Marchers will protest for improved wages and conditions for farm workers. Lawrence organizations will support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers with the "March for Fair Food" beginning at
Coalitions unite for 6-mile march
9:30 a.m. at the Burger King at 1100 N. Third St. The three organizations that will sponsor the march are Lawrence Fair Food, Kansas Mutual Aid and the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice.
are the country's most exploited. They earn sub-poverty wages and are unable to form unions, CIW said.
Katy Andrus, Lenexa senior, was a founding member of Lawrence Fair Food last year.
She said the farm workers were viewed only as tractors that harvested the produce used by large
"The suppliers have no choice but to take more money from the workers."
KIM COUGHLIN
Lawrence Fair Food Director
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a community-based farm worker organization in Florida. A press release from the CIW said the majority of the Immokalee community is Latino, Haitian and Mayan immigrants who harvest produce for large corporations. According to the CIW, Immokalee farm workers
fast food corporations. Andrus said students were the mouths that consumed this food.
"It's imperative that those two groups come together," Andrus said.
Protestors will continue
from the Third Street location to the Burger King at 1107 W. Sixth St. They will stop for a mini rally then end with a large rally at the Burger King at 1301 W. 23rd St.
Kim Coughlin, Lawrence Fair Food director, said past CIW boycots and protests across the nation had been successful. In 2005, Taco Bell agreed to improve the conditions and wages of the CIW farm workers that provided produce for their restaurants. Burger King has become the next target for the organization.
"Burger King hasn't been willing to work with the CIW," Coughlin said. "They use so many tomatoes that they pressure the suppliers to lower the price on tomatoes. In turn, the suppliers have no choice but to take more money from the workers." At each stop, the managers of Burger King will be given a letter requesting improved wages and conditions for the laborers in Florida.
"I hope they will react positively," Coughlin said. "Because we are only demanding what is right."
Keva Silversmith, Burger King's vice president of corporation communication, said the restaurants have negotiated with CIW for the past couple of years. He said Burger King wanted the best conditions for farm workers, but the restaurants had no direct impact on the situation. The CIW requested Burger King write a check to the organization, but Silversmith said the company wasn't open to that option right now.
"We have no evidence it will improve the lives of the farm workers," Silversmith said. "For an increase in wages, it will have to be the farm employers who directly influence the farm workers."
Silversmith said past CIW demonstrations and past protests had been peaceful. He said local Burger King restaurants were given general protest procedures.
"It is our goal to keep the protestors and customers in a safe, nonconfrontational environment," Silversmith said.
Participants are encouraged to wear blue, the official CIW color, and bring noisemakers and instruments. Coughlin said local musicians would perform and area farmers would provide free, healthy food at the 23rd Street location.
Andrus said she was looking forward to getting coverage for the cause.
"It's going to be a group of really excited people," Andrus said. "We're just trying to get the word out."
Anyone who would like to participate in the march should meet at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at Burger King, 1100 N. Third St., or e-mail Kim Coughlin at kcoughlin@riseup.net for more information.
Edited by Rachael Gray
NATION
BY MICHAEL RUBINKAM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Review launched; miners still missing
HUNTINGTON, Utah — Even as crews began a last effort Thursday to find six trapped miners, lawmakers in Washington launched separate reviews of whether the mining that preceded the thunderous cave-in was too aggressive.
As a drill bored a sixth hole into the side of a mountain, Sen. Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, demanded a litany of documents from the Labor Department about the Crandall Canyon Mine and its operators.
"The loss of life at the mine, and the devastating emotional toll on families of the victims, underscore the urgent need for a thorough examination of our federal system of mine safety," Kennedy, D-Mass., wrote to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.
The six miners have been
Kennedy wants to review several petitions the mine's co-owner, Bob Murray, made to the Mine Safety and Health Administration for changes in his mining plans at Crandall Canyon, among other documents. Experts have said the proposed changes were risky and could have led to the initial collapse.
trapped since Aug. 6, and searchers have found no sign they survived. Three other miners were killed and six more injured last week when the shifting mountain crumbled around them as they tunneled toward the missing men. Tunneling has not resumed.
The Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees labor issues announced plans for a hearing on the mine collapse when Congress returns from its summer break Sept. 5. The subcommittee wants to question Murray and MSHA chief Richard Stickler.
Officials with Murray's company
"This is the last hole," Murray said Wednesday night. Drilling it, he said, will "bring closure to me that I could never get them out alive."
The sixth hole will head toward an area where the miners were last believed to have been working, some 1,500 feet below the surface. It was expected to be completed over the weekend.
did not return repeated requests for comment Thursday.
signal the miners have met with silence.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said in a news release Thursday that no air samples or video images could be obtained from the fifth hole because it became plugged with mud.
At the mine, crews began working on the sixth test hole to try to locate the men.
Other holes provided only grainy video images of rubble and poor air sample readings, and efforts to
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NEWSPAPER (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
published four times a year. The next issue will be published in early September, and vendors who pass out the paper can be identified easily by their red messenger bags.
"They are proud to see their work in print," said Loring Henderson, the director of the Lawrence Community Shelter. "When the paper is coming out, they start coming around asking, 'How soon? Can I have extra copies? Can I send some to my family?'"
Sweets hopes Change of Heart will be able to improve after receiving a $9,000 grant last week from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation of Oklahoma City, Okla., which will allow the newspaper to buy two computers, pay for printing costs and pay Sweets a stipend.
The vendors who distribute Change of Heart ask for a $1 donation and get to keep 75 cents of each dollar. They are allowed to keep 10 free papers, and they wear buttons with the Change of Heart logo. Henderson said there were usually about five reporters and five to 10 vendors working on each issue of the paper.
"This will be a tremendous help! Henderson said. "The paper has been struggling for years with donated time."
Tracy Fields, who does most of the artwork for the newspaper, recently wrote articles about the social service league and the Salvation Army in the
paper.
"The paper has a very broad following, and we would like to make it even bigger." Fields said. "There are some really wonderful business owners that are getting involved with distributing the paper."
The paper's next step is to try to build a relationship with the KU School of Journalism, so that students can come help with the newspaper by editing stories, designing the layout and passing it out to the public with the homeless. Although no contact with the school has been made yet, Henderson said they hoped that part of the new grant can be used toward building this association with the University.
Fields said he liked what the paper stood for and thought that the response from the public had been mostly positive.
"The homeless often feel misunderstood," Henderson said. "This is a way for them to get credibility and have their issues explained. It helps in several ways, and I'm still surprised at how important it is to them. They really are pleased to be published."
"We get anything from people being gracious and really interested in buying the paper to,people telling us to get a job," Fields said. "But for the most part people are interested in it."
— Edited by Amelia Freidline
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