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THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 2007
WWW.KANSAN.COM
VOL.117 ISSUE 127
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
PAGE 1A
march madness
Distance from campus and graduation status don't deter students from competing in brackets.
3A
opinion
Check out The Kansan's latest opinion cartoon.
9A
Nebraska locks in victory after weak defense falls short early in the game.
weather
TODAY
index
Classifieds...5B
Crossword...8B
Horoscopes...8B
Opinion...9B
Sports...1B
Sudoku...8B
All contents, unless stated otherwise.
© 2007 The University Daily Kansan
Photo illustration by Anna Faltermeier/KANSAN
BY ASHLEE KIELER
Student Senate passed $22.75 in student fee increases Wednesday night, bringing the total increases for the year to $54.75.
Senate passed six fee increases and one decrease.
Increases were approved to the Multicultural Resource Center, Student Health Services, Student Union, environmental services, summer readership and media fees. Senate approved a decrease of $1 for the student readership program.
Senate approved an increase of $1.75 to the Multicultural Resource Center fee. The increase gives $1.50 to fund a new full-time front desk position at the Sabatini Multicultural Center. The other 25 cents go to fund long-term maintenance for the center.
"It's ridiculous to create a building without paying for someone to run it," Jason Boots, Plano, Texas, senior and Student Body president, said.
The bill also gave the MRC control of next year's Multicultural
Student fee increases since 2000
Education Fund.
Graph by Brenna Hawley/KANSAN
The Student Health Fee increased $13.25. The increase is the first since the 2003 fiscal year.
No additional services will be added from the increase. The fee increase specifically allows Health Services to operate at their current level.
Student Health Services operated at a deficit for the 2006 fiscal year because of inflation costs.
"The fee is about recovery, it's positive for the health center." Chris Foltz, Lenexa junior and chair of the Student Health Advisory Board, said.
The Student Union fee increased by $6. The last increase took place in the 2002 fiscal year.
The fee increase covers a jump in utility costs and half of custodial labor costs.
David Mucci, director of the Memorial Union, said that since the last fee increase, utilities have increased by $131,000 and custodial costs by $300,000.
"We're doing the best we can to keep fees low, but we can't make enough revenue to support increases. Mucci said."
Beginning next year, the Health
Sales tax increase may fund upkeep
SEE FEES ON PAGE 3A
UNIVERSITY FINANCE
Sales tax in Douglas County may increase.
BY JOE HUNT
A proposed bill would allow Kansas counties with public universities to increase sales taxes by one tenth of a cent. The money from the increase in taxes would go towards deferred maintenance costs at public universities.
The current sales tax rate in Douglas County is 7.3 percent. 5.3 percent is federal tax, one percent is county tax and one percent is city tax. The bill would increase the total sales tax rate to 7.31 percent. Despite the increase, the county's tax rate will remain lower than nearby Johnson County's sales tax of 7.525 percent.
Sen. Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence) said that increasing sales tax in certain counties was a bad idea.
In 2006, Douglas County's share of sales taxes totaled $0.755,543
according to the Douglas County Treasurer's Office. Increasing the tax rate in 2006 would have earned the county an extra $5,075.
Francisco said that counties with community colleges paid an extra tax, but those schools usually served smaller geographic areas.
"They really are statewide institutions rather than county institutions," Francisco said of state universities.
Rep. Paul Davis (D-Lawrence) agreed that extra taxes should be uniform among all Kansas counties or not exist.
"This is a state university and I think that everyone in the state has a responsibility to support it,"
Davis said. "There are students at the University of Kansas that come from every corner of this state."
Even if the proposed change becomes law, students shouldn't notice much of a difference when shopping in Douglas County. A student who spends $7,000 in Douglas County would pay an extra $7 of sales tax under the proposed change.
A November 2006 report released by the Kansas Board of Regents determined that the University and the University of Kansas Medical Center require 284.7 million in repairs.
Kansan staff writer Joe Hunt can be contacted at Jhunt@kansan. com.
Edited by Jyl Unruh
》 HURRICANE KATRINA
Former FEMA leader opens up to students
BY DANAE DESHAZER
The poor response to Hurricane Katrina was caused by the dysfunctional behavior of Louisiana's local government and the lack of public communication about the situation, Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said.
Bill Lacy, director of the Dole Institute, introduced Brown as the "villain" of Hurricane Katrina, but asked the audience to decide for themselves what the truth was in the situation.
"The administration was so focused on terrorism and other problems that homeland security was a problem child," Brown said.
Brown said he started his position prior to Katrina by creating five disaster scenarios that FEMA should plan for, including hurricanes and tsunamis. However, the budget didn't allow for FEMA to prepare for a potential catastrophic disaster.
"FEMA was crippled after budget cuts and programs being split apart," Brown said.
Michiko Takei/KANSAN
After posing to administrators that FEMA's budget was important if a disaster were to happen, Brown said each person he asked turned a deaf ear to him.
Brown said Hurricane Katrina
Michael Brown, former director of Federal Emergency Management Agency, discusses his role with the Bush Administration in response to Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday evening at Dole Institute of Politics.
could have been helped if the government would have federalized the response, which would invoke national security to take over the state governments.
The dysfunction of Louisiana local government, including the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, was part of the cause for a delayed response by FEMA, Brown said.
The second problem Brown addressed was miscommunication after the storm hit. He said that he announced the truth about sending food, medicine, cots, etc.
Brown said, "Factually we were doing that, but it still wasn't enough."
He said he regretted that he didn't tell the whole story to the public.
》 ENGINEERING
SEE BROWN ON PAGE 3A
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Laura Stiles, Prairie Village junior, and left, Michael Hochman, Kansas City, Kan., junior, right, float on NASA's "Weightless Wonder" aircraft.
Student invention tested with NASA
BY NATHAN GILL
When you stand up in an airplane, you don't usually float toward the ceiling. But that was the experience four University of Kansas engineering students had last week on NASA's C-9 "Weightless Wonder" aircraft.
The students used the aircraft, which simulates a zero gravity environment by free-falling from high altitudes, to test a mechanical arm that could make docking space shuttles to the International Space Station safer.
"The airplane is a flying laboratory,"
Aaron Teroel, Auburn, Ala. senior said.
Terrell, along with Laura Stiles, Prairie Village junior, Michael Hochman, Kansas City, Kan., junior, and Eric Simmons, Kansas City, Mo., junior, have been building and testing the docking device at a Learned Hall laboratory since December. The team proposed building the prototype arm to NASA's Reduced Gravity Student
Flight Opportunities Program in September, which has funded their research. Other funding has come from the school of engineering and other campus organizations.
Hochman said the arm was composed of several stiff wires connected by vertebrate-like supports. He said the wires are made with shape memory alloys, which have the ability to "remember" a pre-set shape. When subjected to electricity on Earth, the wires contract and cause the arm to partially coil.
"it's kind of like taking a string and twisting it at both ends" Hochman said.
The arm's purpose is to make space shuttle docking safer by grabbing the shuttle and guiding it into a docking position. Hochman said that the current NASA rendezvous maneuver was dangerous; astronauts basically ram their shuttle into a small target on the space station.
SEE NASA ON PAGE 3A