All-Star game: American League breaks its three-year losing streak. Page 12
Dissection: Student Senate debates ethical choice for biology students. Page 3
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KS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 3
PO BOX 3585
TOPEKA, KS 66601-3585
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
NEWS 864-4810
WEDNESDAY. JULY 9. 1997
SECTION A VOL. 103, NO. 155
Group saves champagne from the drink, downs it
ADVERTISING 864-4358
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Five a.m. might be too early for champagne, but 81 years isn't too late
Members of the C Star diving consortium said bottoms up Monday morning to a cache of 81-year-old champagne they had just salvaged from a World War I shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.
"The champagne tasted superb," Claes Bergvall told the Swedish news agency TT. He is part of the consortium that found the wreck last month under 210 feet of water in the Gulf of Finland.
The schooner Joenkoeping was laden with tens of thousands of bottles of cognac, champagne and red wine when it was sunk by a German U-boat in 1916.
The diving consortium doesn't know how much of the cargo is intact, but hopes it will fetch huge sums at auction.
Helicopter crashes, kills eight soldiers
FORT BRAGG, N.C. — An Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training mission crashed and burned in a remote wooded area of Fort Bragg, N.C., yesterday, killing all eight soldiers aboard, military officials said.
The chopper went down about 2:15 p.m. at the western end of the sprawling base near Fayetteville, N.C. All the dead were members of the 82nd Airborne Division, said Sgt. Ron Gardiner, a division representative.
It was not clear immediately what caused the crash. The weather was clear and calm when the helicopter went down. The crew was not conducting live-fire exercises and no other choppers were in the area.
Capt. Cindi King, a representative with the 82nd Airborne, said not all of the bodies would be removed to preserve the crash site for investigators from Fort Rucker, Ala., who were expected to arrive today.
Details from the crash site were sketchy, and access was limited.
An unidentified soldier saw the crash as he was driving on a road nearby and called 911, King said. She said military officials had spoken to him, but she did not say what information he had provided. Details from the crash site were.
The Black Hawk usually operates with a crew of three and can carry as many as 13 soldiers.
McDougal to stand trial for embezzlement
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Whitewater figure Susan McDougal faces an Aug. 20 trial on charges she embezzled from famed conductor Zubin Mehta, a judge ruled yesterday.
Video shot by Raleigh television station WNCN-TV showed the wreckage still smoldering two hours after the crash. A chunk of charred metal was lying in a heap and was barely recognizable as the helicopter's cabin. Most of the rest of the aircraft appeared to have disintegrated.
McDougal's lawyer had argued that she was denied a fair preliminary hearing because she wasn't allowed to call key witnesses to tess tif, including Mehta's wife.
McDougald has pleaded not guilty to embezzling $150,000 from Mehta and his wife, Nancy, while working as their personal assistant and bookkeeper from 1989 to 1992. Prosecutors allege she forged checks and charged hotel rooms, plane tickets and shopping sprees.
But Superior Court Judge Paul Flynn said McDougal's constitutional rights had not been violated and set the Aug. 20 trial date...
McDougal has been jailed for contempt since September for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury looking into wide-ranging matters involving the Clintons and Whitewater land development deals.
The Associated Press
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
Photos by GR Gordon-Ross KANGAN
/KANSAN
No one was injured in a house fire yesterday at 1038 Tennessee St. The fire was reported about noon, and smoke already was coming out from under the roof's rays when the first truck
arrived, said Capt. Lexie Engleman of the Lawrence fire department. No one was home at the time, and the fire was under control within 15 minutes. Most damage was isolated to the second floor, but the first floor had smoke and water damage. Engleman said. The cause of the fire is
still under investigation. In the above photo, Lawrence firefighters Chris King and Joe Mehl sit atop an aerial ladder and try to extinguish the fire.
Students wary about tuition hike
By Una Hart
The newly-approved tuition increase at the University of Kansas will amount to about $2 million in additional funds. But students are concerned about how the money will be spent, rather than the actual amount they'll have to pay.
Kansas staff writer
The Board of Regents approved a 2.8 percent tuition increase for the fall of 1998 at its June 26 board meeting in Topeka. The Regents also allowed an additional $1-per-credit-hour increase, contingent on the state legislature matching it with a $2-per-credit-hour technology appropriation.
John Miller, Kansas City, Kan., junior, said the increase would not be a hardship for him.
"But, if they are vague about how the money is used, I'm skeptical," he said. "I sounds like they are."
"It's expensive enough right now. Financial aid is the only way I'm going to school and they keep cutting that down," said Maggie Ward, Beloit freshman. "Basically, I just want to know where it's going, and I would like more of a say as to where it's going."
Lindy Ealdin, associate provost,
said that the increase would be spent for operational expenses,
which could include some academic equipment. However, if the legislature approves the $2-for-$1 request, that could mean an additional $1.8 million annually, which would have to be spent entirely on academic equipment.
Some KU students, however, said that paying tuition was already difficult.
"We've gone to individual departments and asked them to
Big 12 tuition
Resident Undergraduate Student Tuition and Required Fees Per Academic Year: Big 12 Comparison 1996-1997
Resident Undergraduate
Baylor $8.806
Nebraska $2,638
Missoufl $4,121 Colorado $2,841
Iowa State $2,666
Nebraska $2,638
Texas Tech $2,496
Kansas State $2,371
Texas Tech $2,496
Kansas State $2,373
Texas A&M $2,361
Texas $2,612
Texas A&M $2,361
Iowa State $2,666
make a list of their needs, and are working from that list," said Richard Givens, assistant provost. "Before appropriating funds, we check with schools and see if they still need what they have asked for or have found other resources."
Kansas $2,310
Oklahoma $2,178
Each school's list is prioritized. Some of the academic equipment requested includes two autoclaves for biological sciences priced at $40,000 each; 15 microscopes for the geology department at $3,500 each; and 15 computers for the history department at $1,650 each.
Givens said if the legislature approved the matching-funds appropriation, a student-and-faculty committee would be formed to decide how the money would be spent, based on each school's prioritylist.
Oklahoma $2,178
Oklahoma State $2,161
Source: University of Kansas Profiles,
March 1997, p. 9-315
In addition to the increased tuition of $1024.95 for 15 credit hours, KU students will continue to pay the required $210 campus fee.
(USPS 650-640)
Alien abductions have some deeper meaning
Student sees them as cries for help
By Daniel Ethan Thompson Kansan staff writer
A KU graduate student is researching what aliens already have studied.
Well...kind of.
Stephanie Kelley, an assistant director in the communications studies department, is studying alien abductees, people who claim to have been poked, prodded and penetrated by beings from another world.
"A million people have been abducted and are saying we need aliens," she said. "I want to know why."
She wants to understand why people report stories of alien abduction and what that says about our culture.
"I don't doubt there is life elsewhere. The universe is gargantuan," Kelley said. "But the possibility that another life form will look like us, with a head and torso, is incredibly unlikely."
Kelley doesn't believe her subjects have taken rides in space ships. She is studying what abductees are actually communicating by telling tales of abduction.
"The bottom line is, if there were flying saucers zipping around the skies with aliens, then someone would have proof," Kelley said.
Kelley received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Emerson College in Boston. She's in her third year of the Ph.D communications program and is writing her dissertation about the rhetoric of alien abduction.
She has yet to find anything that convinces her. Kelley said that
By studying UFOlogists and works of other scientists, Kelley has come up with four social crises in our society that she thinks are causing stories of alien abductions. The crises are: information overload, spiritual stagnation, the search for community and the search for self.
the reports must reveal something else.
She said information overload was causing people to become lost in the sea of information, and in turn causing them to devalue emotion and intuition.
If it's not in the public sphere, Kelley said, then there are other ways that emotion or intuition manifest in people's lives. The increase in spirituality, holistic medicine and alien abductions are all examples. All are reactions of today's spiritual stagnation, she said.
"we need gods," Kelley wrote in her paper The Alien Myth of Abduction. "Belief in some greater being or purpose is another coping mechanism, one which is sorely lacking in today's society."
Kelley said humans also had an inherent need for a sense of belonging. Because of the technology and fragmentation of our culture, subcultures emerge in order to fulfill the individual's need for community, she said.
The final condition which promotes stories of abduction, Kelley said, was the search for self.
"It used to be people had a trade or craft. Now they're in a factory working with widgets," she said.
"There are a lot of people and it's a small planet, they need to feel special."
She contends that alien abductions are myths that give people a sense of community and of being unique.
Red planet was possibly wet planet eons ago Pathfinder finds rock indicating past floods
— a vital requirement if the red planet was to develop life as Earth did.
PASADENA, Calif. — The first chemical analysis of a rock on Mars suggests the dusty world may have had abundant water at the time it formed
Geologists already know that water once existed on Mars. On Monday, Pathfinder scientists presented evidence of massive floods 1 billion to 3 billion years ago. But the latest evidence hints that water may have existed there more than 4 billion years ago, about the same time life began on Earth.
The findings sent to scientists from the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft and released yesterday suggested the rock — a football-sized specimen nicknamed Barnacle Bill — may be andesite. That's a type of volcanic rock named for Earth's Andes Mountains, where it is common.
Such a rock could have been brought to the surface by volcanic activity or a meteorite impact.
It is too early to tell for certain that Barnacle Bill is andesite. But because some types of the rock only form in the presence of water, the new results may eventually lead to the demonstration that early Mars had water in its interior, said Allan Treiman, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
"It completely changes most people's views of Mars. Mars becomes a place that had water from the beginning and the water was very active in the planet," Treiman said in a telephone interview, just as scientists were finishing a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
After the Sojourner rover spent 10 hours with a small instrument pressed up against Barnacle Bill, scientists said it appears to contain the mineral quartz.
"This is a real surprise. We were not expecting a rock of this composition," said Hap McSween, a University of Tennessee specialist in meteorites working with the Pathfinder team.
Barnacle Bill is more earth-like than scientists had expected, suggesting that Mars' rocks were heated and reheated many times in the planet's early history. But Pathfinder scientists were reluctant to make assumptions about water or life on Mars.
Because scientists haven't had a chance to closely examine the rock's texture, McSween said it was too early to be sure whether it was andesite or a mix of other types of rocks, like granite and basalt, the most commonly found lava on Earth.
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The chemical analysis of Barnacle Bill also strengthens scientists' belief that 12 meteorites found on Earth and thought to come from Mars, including the famous Antarctic meteorites where some scientists think they see signs of life, are indeed Martian.
In any case, Mars seems to have undergone a process of successive melting and cooling, which is needed to form these types of rocks.
INDEX
TODAY
Opinion ... 4
Heath News ... 5
World News ... 6
National News ... 7
Sports ... 10
Classifieds ... 11
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