2A THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005
TUESDAY top10
BV ERIN CASTANEDA editor@kansan.com KANSAN CORRESPONDENT
Editors note: As part of our new daily 2A features, each week The Kansan will provide you with a Top 10 list about life at the University.
TOP 10 REASON WHY STUDENTS GO TO WATKINS
9. Contraception Management
10. Allergies
8. Tonsillitis (sore throat)
7. Sprains and Strains
6. Urinary Tract Infection
5. Sinusitis (inflammation of nasal sinus)
3. Pharyngitis (inflammation of the throat)
2. Gynecological Exams
1. Upper Respiratory Infection
Source:Diana Malott, assistant director of Watkins Memorial Health Center
MAINTENANCE
Broken elevator gets a lift
BY MALINDA OSBORNE
mosborne@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Repair work for the out-of-service elevator in Snow Hall began yesterday. The elevator stopped working Aug. 18.
stopped working atag While the elevator was out of service, Gloria Prothe, office supervisor in Snow Hall, said many people were inconvenienced.
"I know of at least one student who is in a wheelchair and couldn't get to his class," Prothe said. "We haven't seen him around and no one's contacted us."
The student did not contact the office, said Melissa Manning, associate director for disability resources at the University of Kansas.
"If they had just called the math department or our office, the class could have very easily been moved," Manning said.
Some faculty members and housekeeping service also encountered difficulties because of the broken elevator. Prothe said faculty who needed to move furniture from their offices could not do so. Housekeeping staff had to drag supplies and trash up and down the stairs.
Some students had not noticed the problem.
"I did not even know Snow Hall had an elevator," said Molly Wells, Austin, Texas, senior.
Atanas Stefanov, assistant professor of mathematics, has an office on the top floor. He said he had taken the elevator daily.
he had taken it, "It is an inconvenience, but then again, maybe it's not such a bad thing for me," Stefanov said.
saric
The University's Facilities and Operations department has a contract set up with Otis Elevators for maintenance and repairs. Prothe said she had tried to contact the company several times in the past few weeks. All she had heard was that a supervisor would contact her.
"I don't know why it takes so long to replace a motor." Prothe said.
Mark Sindors works for Otis Elevators and helped repair the broken elevator. He said the motor had burned out because the building was overheated and a brown-out occurred, meaning the voltage was too low, which strained the motor.
"Usually when ordering a new motor, you can get one overnight." Sindors said. "But we had to order a 50 horse-power motor, and that took some time to find one."
Sindors said the repair delay was due to the size of the motor.
The repairs began yesterday morning and Sindors said the elevator should be working by the end of the day.
Student finds time for peace
ON THE BOULEVARD
President of Kung-fu Club uses Buddhism to balance his busy schedule
BY FRANK TANKARD
fankard@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Edited by Theresa Montaño
Editor's note: University Daily Kansan reporter Frank Tankard writes a regular feature on KU students, faculty, and staff who have a story to tell. If you have an interesting story or know someone who does, e-mail Frank at fankard@ kansan.com.
He bows his head and says one word: "Amitabha." He repeats it 10 times. Amitabha: endless light, endless life.
He raises his head slowly and smiles. It's hard not to sense the calm he's been cultivating for the past three years.
Frank Liu sits at a table in the Kansas Union, his fingers touching tip to tip, his palms resting against his chest. A bright afternoon sun from a window illuminates his back.
Liu, 29 and from Taipei, Taiwan, is a peaceful man. He's also a busy man. He's working on his doctoral thesis in political science. He should graduate in December, maybe May.
"A peaceful mind will give you a very happy life," he says softly.
He's president of KU Kung-fu Club, former president and current member of the KU Buddhist Association, former president of the Taiwanese Student Association and a graduate teaching assistant in political science.
Liu says he has two secrets to controlling his busy life: Pure Land Buddhism and tai chi, a Chinese exercise of balance and meditation. He says the disciplines work in combination to calm his mind.
"You can say Buddhism is different than tai chi," he says. "You can say they're the same thing."
Liu started learning both disciplines in the spring of 2002 while wrapping up his master's degree in political science.
Kristin Driskell/KANSAN
He describes his mind, his life, as being hectic then. After spending two years at the University and serving as president of the Taiwanese Student Association, everything seemed to unravel.
"Now my dream's broken, it's gone," he says. "I was very sad."
He applied to six colleges to pursue his doctorate and got two rejection letters and four non-responses.
Liu hadn't considered staying at the
Liu leans forward in his chair, remembering the moment when his life changed. It was May 2002, and he was alone at midnight in a room of Summerfield Hall, putting the final touches on his master's dissertation, due the next morning.
He hadn't saved his work for five hours. His computer crashed. The only trace of the culmination of two years of study was the incomplete paper from five hours ago. He searched every folder. Nothing. So he wished.
University of Kansas. He didn't even renew the lease on his apartment.
Liu leans closer.
"I made a wish in my mind to the universe," he says. "I was talking to myself, saying, 'Right now I need a miracle, but I don't believe in that at all. If I get a miracle, I say, 'I will study Buddhism.' So I say, 'Amitabha,' the Buddhist chant. I say to myself this, and I reboot my system. It's midnight, or 10 past 12, and the document's back."
The moment wasn't magic, Liu says,
but it wasn't dumb luck either.
"Don't think Buddhism will give you magic powers," he says. "A peaceful mind will make you happy and that's where good luck comes from. It's not about being a vegetarian or not. It's not about bowing to Buddha or not. There's no mystery in Buddhism."
Since that moment, Liu says he's dedicated himself to the study of Pure Land Buddhism, a sect of Buddhism popular in East Asia. He started regularly attending the KU Buddhist Association's Wednesday night meditations, reading the Sutra and chanting. He served as president of the KU Buddhist Association for two years.
first Association of Liu also began practicing tai chi with the Kung-fu Club on Tuesday nights. He became president of that organization as well, and he still holds that position.
Cheng-Shan "Frank" Liu, graduate student, displays his Kung-fu skills. He is the president of KU Kung-fu club and former president of KU Amitabha Buddhist Association.
that position:
Shortly after that May night, Liu received an e-mail from Robert Huckefelt, a well known scholar from Indiana University, who advised him to study under a KU professor named Paul Johnson.
So he decided to stay at the University under Johnson's tutelage. It would be a challenge because he was no longer enrolled and he didn't have a place to live.
Liu had taken one of Johnson's classes but didn't know Johnson was interested in the same brand of political science that interested him.
After a month-long search for affordable housing, one of his friends left for Taiwan and leased an apartment to him. Then Luu found an opening for a teaching assistant for a Chinese class in the East Asian Languages and Cultures department. It's been smooth sailing since then.
taining a picture of Buddha in his wallet to remind him to chant. He tries to chant "Amitabha" continuously and clear his mind of all other thoughts.
Liu now wears chanting beads on his right wrist and keeps a card con-
"It's just my personal story," he says, "but I've seen many, many stories like mine since I started Buddhism. There's something very profound out there."
Edited by Erick R. Schmidt
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hurricane Katrina hits Gulf Coast states hard
BY ALLEN G. BREED THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hurricane Katrina destroyed houses and flooded neighborhoods in the Historic District of New Orleans as it hit the Gulf Coast states on Monday. Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm while moving through eastern Mississippi.
NEW ORLEANS — Announcing itself with shrieking, 145-mph winds, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast just outside New Orleans on Monday, submerging entire neighborhoods up to their roofs, swamping Mississippi's beachfront casinos and blowing out windows in hospitals, hotels and high-rises
But it was plenty bad in New Orleans and elsewhere along the coast, where scores people had to be rescued from rooftops and attics as the floodwaters rose around them.
For New Orleans — a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression — it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared.
At least five deaths were blamed on Katrina — three people killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two killed in a traffic accident in Alabama. And an untold number of other people were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods, many of which could not be reached by rescuers because of high water.
Katrina knocked out power to more than three-quarters of a million people from Louisiana to the Florida's Panhandle, and authorities said it could be two months before electricity is restored to everyone. Ten major hospitals in New Orleans were running on emergency backup power.
supplies. The Pentagon sent experts to help with search-and-rescue operations.
erations.
Katrina was later downgraded to a tropical storm as it passed through eastern Mississippi, moving north at 21 mph. Winds were still a dangerous 65 mph.
The federal government began rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid
Forecasters said that as the storm moves north through the nation's midsection over the next few days, it may spawn tornadoes over the Southeast and swamp the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys with a potentially ruinous 8 inches or more of rain.
Oil refiners said damage to their equipment in the Gulf region appeared to be minimal, and oil prices dropped back from the day's highs above $70 a barrel. But the refiners were still assessing the damage, and the Bush administration said it would consider releasing oil from the nation's emergency stockpile if necessary.
Katrina had menaced the Gulf Coast over the weekend as a 175-mph. Category 5 monster, the most powerful ranking on the scale. But it weakened to a Category 4 and made a slight right-hand turn just become it came ashore around daybreak near the Louisiana bayou town of Buras, passing early of New Orleans on a path that spared the Big Easy — and its fabled French Quarter — from its full fury.
"I've never encountered anything like it in my life. It just kept rising and rising and rising," said Bryan Vernon, who spent three hours on
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said 200 people have been rescued in boats from rooftops, attics and other locations around the New Orleans area, a scene playing out in Mississippi as well. In some cases, rescuers are sawing through roofs to get to people in attics, and other stranded residents "are swimming to our boats," the governor said. In one dramatic rescue, a person was plucked from a roof by a helicopter.
plucked from a lake.
Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast,
Mississippi was subjected to both
Katrina's harshest winds and highest
recorded storm surges — 22 feet.
"Let me tell you something, folks: I've been out there. It's complete devastation," said Gulfport, Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan.
In Gulfport, young children clung to one another in a small blue boat as neighbors shuffled children and elderly residents out of a flooded neighborhood.
In Alabama, Katrina's arrival was marked by the flash and crackle of exploding transformers. The hurricane toppled huge oak branches on Mobile's waterfront and broke apart an oil-drilling platform, sending a piece slamming into a major bridge.
his roof, screaming over howling winds for someone to save him and his fiancee.
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Jonathan Keeling
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Ty Beavers, Karlin at
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Muddy six-foot waves crashed into the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, flooding stately, antebellum mansions and littering them with oak branches.
It was Katrina's second blow: The hurricane hit Florida on Thursday and was blamed for 11 deaths. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.
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