FEATURES
Burning Spear comes to Lawrence tomorrow. Page 5.
COMFORTABLE High 80° Low 52° Page2.
THE UNIVERSITY KANSAS KS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY TOPEKA, KS 66612
Z
COMMON TABLE
VOL.104, NO.11
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6.1994
(USPS 650-640)
NEWS: 864-4810
Lawrence fugitive is still on the run
Police double reward, say Beers is armed and considered dangerous
By Manny Lopez
Kansan staff writer
After a weekend shooting that allegedly involved escaped prisoner Chad Beers, authorities have doubled the reward for information leading to his arrest.
"We have increased the reward to $5,000"
said U.S. Marshall Rand Rock, "We are doing all we can to get him locked up again."
Chad Beers
About 6 p.m. yesterday, Lawrence police set up a check point for Beers near 19th and Harper streets. Police said that they were checking the trunks of cars after they received a tip that Beers was in the
area. That search turned up nothing.
Beers was allegedly involved in a shooting
and attempted break-in at an East Lawrence mobile home about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, Rock said.
Rock said that a man, who lives at the Brookwood Mobile Home Park, 1908 E. 19th St., said he fired a shot at someone who was trying to climb in a window. The man might have known the intruder was Beers, Rock said.
"Beers may have been shot with a 20-gauge shotgun through the window," Rock said. "We don't know if he was hit, but it is possible he has an injury to one of his arms."
Rock said hospitals in the Kansas City and Lawrence areas had been given a description of Beers and were notified of his possible
Lawrence Memorial Hospital officials confirmed yesterday that Beers was not admitted to the hospital throughout the weekend.
injury.
Police said that they had had numerous sightings of Beers reported since his escape. The search for him is being concentrated in northeast Kansas, Rock said.
"My guess is that he is getting some help," he said. "He's got to eat and get money and stay
"Especially after the weekend incident, Beers should be considered armed and dangerous."Rock said.
Some of Beers' friends and acquaintances in Lawrence might have helped him, Rock said.
somewhere."
After the shooting Sunday, authorities said Beers' father called Kansas City, Kan., police to tell them he had been in contact with his son and tried to get him to surrender. Rock said.
Rock said he thought Beers took off in a semi-truck his father usually drove. That truck was later found in Coffee County.
On Aug. 30, Beers and another inmate, Scott Scanlon, 31, escaped from the Sebastian County jail in Fort Smith, Ark. Scanlon was arrested Thursday in Wilson County after the stolen truck he was driving broke down near Fredonia.
Cafeteria work overlooked by most students
By Ashley Miller Kansan staff writer
Dining Services is having trouble filling part-time student positions at the Ekdahl Dish Commons this year.
Mindy Pendreigh, Dining Services manager, said that 49 students were working at the cafeteria — about 12 percent fewer than were needed to run the facility efficiently. Last year, about 80 students worked at the cafeteria.
Student employees restock and serve food, wipe tables and wash dishes.
"It's a real nain." he said.
Michael Beson, Derby sophomore and a student employee, said the decline in student employees made it hard to keep everything stocked.
Pendreigh said the decline in student employees had diminished the dish-washing staff, forcing the cafeteria to use plastic silverware and paper plates and cups. Pendreigh said this gave students a bad impression of the cafeteria's efficiency.
"The level of service isn't quite what you'd like it to be," she said.
Pendreigh also said that serving meals on paper was expensive.
However, Pendreigh said, the job paid $4.35 per hour, 10 cents above minimum wage.
She said she thought that students weren't applying for the open positions because they knew the jobs only paid once a month.
Barbara Quintero, assistant director of Dining Services, said she thought students weren't applying to work at the cafeteria because they didn't need to work. Parents now were more willing to give their children money, she said, so that they didn't have to work and could devote all of their time to studying.
Pendreigh said the cafeteria also lost some student employees because they did not realize they were required to work during mid-terms and finals. She said the students would quit when attending classes and working a few hours a week became too strenuous.
Most of them were freshmen or sophomores in the residence hall system and had not learned time management vet, she said.
rendreigh said about 25 percent of the work at the cafeteria was normally covered by students. Now, full-time employees are working overtime to cover the hours.
Pendreigh said some were putting in an extra three or four hours a day while others were putting in an extra days worth of work.
She said if more students did not apply, full-time employees probably would have to take the hours permanently.
"The full-time staff realize the needs of the organization, and they pull us through," she said.
Pendreigh said she had about seven positions open at dinner time on Tuesdays and Thursdays and three or four positions open at breakfast every day of the week. She said that there was no deadline for applications for the student employee positions.
College football
Page18.
Big Eight football coaches talk about this past weekend in which their teams went a combined 6-2.
Wells Overlook to be razed, rebuilt
Pete Moore, member of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, left, and Bill Bell, director of building and grounds, stand in front of the soon-to-be-demolished Overlook Tower. The men are spearheading a campaign to raise funds for a new tower, scheduled to open Oct. 20.
Richard Devinki / KANSAN
Tower memories to help raise funds for reconstruction
By Carlos Tejada
Kansan staff writer
Like many Lawrence residents, Pete Moore has stories about Wells Overlook.
Moore, a member of the Lawrence Board of Realtors, graduated from Lawrence High School in 1974, the year the viewing tower overlooking most of Douglas County was opened.
"I have a lot of fond memories about the overlook, none of which can be written up in "Tower Tales,"" he said.
"Tower Tales" is one of many ways Lawrence builders and Douglas County officials are funding and popularizing the rebuilding of the overlook. After two lightning strikes and 20 years of tornadoes, rain and vandalism, the overlook was condemned in March by the county for safety reasons. But public outcry for the reopening of the local landmark has spurred a fund raising effort that supporters hope will lead to its rebuilding.
And if all goes well, the tower — which is higher in elevation than Fraser Hall on KU's campus — will reopen Oct. 20, the anniversary of its original construction by the county.
The new tower will look much like the old tower, said Keith Browning, the county engineer who designed the structure. The highest platform will be two feet taller than the old 18-foot tower, and the guardrails around it will be taller and child-proof.
But the real improvements — thicker bolts, joint braces, more supports and better balance — aren't so obvious, Browning said.
"Most people won't notice a difference, but it's a big difference in the structural system," he said.
The Douglas County Commission balked at the estimated $10,000 cost of rebuilding the structure when it was
presented last spring, Moore said. So the Lawrence Board of Realtors and the Lawrence Homebuilders Association decided to step in.
"It's difficult for us to find a project that benefits the entire community," Moore said. "We felt it was a community project everybody would like."
The cost of the rebuilding has since doubled to $20,000. Moore said, twice what the organizations already have. But the groups hope to fund the project through donations and benefit events, he said. The materials already have been ordered, and the demolition process on the old structure will begin by the end of September.
The old structure's bottom ladder has been removed to keep people from climbing it, but a barbed-wire fence erected in March was torn down by vandals days later.
One way of generating interest in the new overlook is the "Tower Tales" contest. Moore said people with fond memories or unique experiences on the old overlook should write them up and send them in. The one with the most interesting tale will be the first one to climb the new overlook, as well as receive a free dinner at Fifi's Restaurant, 925 Iowa St. and a weekend at the Bismarck Inn of Lawrence, 1100 North Third St.
"We had one girl who was proposed to there and ended up getting married," Moore said.
Entries in the "Tower Tales" contest may be sent to: Wells Overlook Project. P.O Box 761, Lawrence, KS 60444.
Haskell alumni attend school's 110th anniversary
Old faces, new buildings greet former students
By David Wilson Kansan staff writer
Nearly 200 Haskell alumni from across the country swarmed the campus of Haskell Indian Nations University last weekend for a football game, tailgate party and other activities commemorating the 110th anniversary of the school.
The alumni, most of whom graduated before 1970 when Haskell was still a high school, strolled the campus, snapping pictures, slapping backs of old school chums and beaming proudly at the buildings that didn't exist when they were students. Most of the alumni were dressed in purple and yellow, the school's colors.
Nathan Buck, a 1955 graduate now living in Holdenville, Okla., stood in front of Haskell Auditorium and pointed to the few buildings he remembered.
"Everything has changed except for the stadium, the boys' gym, the girls' gym and Pocahontas Hall — that I recognize," he said.
Buck and his two brothers, who also are Haskell graduates, sang gospel songs in the auditorium Saturday afternoon for alumni and their families.
Maxine Wilson McCrary, a 1947 graduate now living in Dallas, stopped to take pictures of the snack bar and video games inside the student union.
She said that when she attended Haskell, the students had a less-impressive meeting place.
"We had a shack," she said. "We called it 'the shack.'"
McCrary said she hadn't been on campus since her brother graduated in 1956.
Many other alumni hadn't seen their classmates for that long or longer, which made for some awkward moments as classmates strained to remember faces from the past.
"Do you remember me?" one alumni dressed in a purple shirt asked Wes Creed, a 1954 graduate now living in Huntsville, Ala.
Iulianne Peter/ KANSAN
"I'm trying hard," Creed said as he shook the man's hand.
Robert Buck of the Buck Family Singers performed at the Haskell Auditorium Saturday as part of the Songfest, one event in a weekend celebration commemorating Haskell Indian Nations University's 110th anniversary.
After a few memory joggers that began with "I'm the guy that..." and "We used to...", the stories started to fly.
Creed's older brother, John Creed, a 1947 graduate now living in Baton Rouge, La., wasn't having as much success.
"I'm not meeting as many people as Wes is," he said. "I've only met three people I graduated with, and I don't remember any of them."
But neither brother had forgotten what Haskell had meant to their lives.
"Indian kids come here to put their lives together," John Creed said. "My brother and I agree that our life wouldn't be the same if it weren't for this place."
Stan Ross, a 1976 graduate and member
of the reunion steering committee, said that the graduates' attendance had proven their loyalty to Haskell.
we could have had it in Timbuktu," he said. "Whatever it took, they'd be there."