Tennis: Both Kansas teams receive byes in Big 12 Tournament first rounds. Page 1B Watkins: New construction will miss deadline, but make budget. Page 3A
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS 864-4810
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
SECTION A VOL. 103, NO. 142
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1997
ADVERTISING 864-4358
(USPS 650-640)
Gingrich investigates tax deduction for fine
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Newt Gingrich is exploring whether he can take a tax deduction for the
Newt Gingrich
$300,000 he must pay to settle his House ethics case.
Dole to cover the $300,000 he is to pay to cover costs of the investigation of his fund-raising activities. He also admitted violating House rules and received a reprimand in the case.
Evans said he and Gingrich planned to investigate the tax-deduction possibility further after drafting the loan documents and presenting the agreement to the House ethics committee for approval.
Some corporate tax accountants say the Georgia Republican could have a case to deduct the payment as a business expense. But others say the case is far from clear.
WASHINGTON — The unprecedented veto power Congress gave the president to kill line-item details in spending laws is on a rarely used fast track for Supreme Court scrutiny.
Supreme Court to look at line-item veto ruling
The court said yesterday that it would decide by July whether a federal judge was right when he struck down the 1996 law, ruling that the court had shifted too much power from Congress to the chief executive.
The disputed law — the only major provision of the 1994 Republican Contract With America endorsed by President Clinton — authorized the president to cut specific items without rejecting an entire spending bill.
According to the law, the president could sign a spending bill and within five days reject specific items in it.
Nearly every U.S. president in the last century had sought line-item veto power. On the state level, 44 governors have such authority.
Supreme Court arguments in the case will be held May 27, more than a month after the justices conclude their regularly scheduled argument calendar.
The federal law took effect in January, but had not yet been invoked by Clinton when it was invalidated April 10.
WASHINGTON — On the eve of a Senate showdown, President Clinton won surprise support from former rival Bob Dole yesterday for a worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons.
Dole changes position on chemical weapons
Dole, a former Senate majority leader who helped sidetrack the treaty during last year's presidential campaign, cited recent concessions agreed to by the White House as the reason for his support, and suggested that additional agreements might still be in the cards.
White House officials expressed optimism that Dole's decision would give momentum to the drive for ratification, but spokesman Mike McCurry said supporters could not yet count on the two-thirds majority necessary.
Dole's appearance with Clinton at the White House overshadowed the opening of debate on the Senate floor, where supporters said the treaty was clearly in the nation's interest and opponents argued it was flawed.
The Associated Press
It will take effect next week, whether or not the United States ratifies it.
Controversy and confusion have clouded this year's Student Senate elections from the beginning. The new class of senators took office last night without incident, and despite the allegations and Investigations, everyone is trying to return to
POLITICS AS USUAL
The players
INVOLVED
KU alumnus Travis Harrod advised Sullivan and Walden free of charge. The extent of Harrod's involvement is still unknown.
When the elections commission learned of Harrod's involvement, an investigation was ordered. The commission found that the Unite coalition violated election rules by not reporting Harrod's services.
FINED
Geoff Krieger / KANSAN
Unite candidates Scott Sullivan, Mike Walden and Becca Kelley. Sullivan and Walden were cited for failing to report the services of Travis Harrod in their budget report, and for misleading the commission with regard to Harrod's involvement. Kelley committed voter fraud by voting on a ballot for which she was not eligible.
Scott Sulivan speaks to the incoming senators before the start of their first meeting. Last night at the final meeting of the year, the old senators relinquished power to the newly elected senators for the 1997-98 school year.
DEFEATED
Delta Force presidential and vice-presidential candidates Jason Fitzell and Matt Caldwell filed a complaint against the Unite coalition regarding election-rule violations.
RESIGNED
OPINION: Perlv explains why he chose to resign. Page 4A
Elections commission chairman Chad Perlov, who left the commission when it decided to reopen deliberation about the punishments for Unite coalition members.
After fines settled commission OK's change of power
By Dave Morantz
Kansan staff writer
It's official
Scott Sullivan and Mike Walden took the offices of student body president and vice president at last night's joint Student Senate meeting.
After making payment arrangements with the elections commission, the commission certified Sullivan and Walden's victory in this month's Senate elections. The commission also certified the victories of Dede Seibel, Nunemaker senator, and Becca Kelley, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences senator. Both were punished for campaign violations.
About 100 old and new senators filled the Kansas Union Ballroom last night for the ceremonial change of power.
In the first half of the meeting, Grey Montgomery, this year's student body president, gave the joint Senate his farewell address.
After listing Senate's accomplishments, including a plan to finance a new child-care center and an expanded campus-wide recycling program, Montgomery received a standing ovation, walked down the center aisle shaking hands, hugged his mother and left the room.
"Ive learned more in the last two years than in any other time in my life," Montgomery told the attentive group of Senators and administrators before leaving. "I'll miss the thrills of victory, but most of all I'll miss the people."
- The Senate then elected three holdover senators from this year's Senate, who will serve on next year's Senate as senior members. Ana Calderon, Lawrence junior, Chelsi Hayden, Alexandria, Va., junior, and Dion Jones, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, sophomore, won holdover seats.
Earlier in the week, Jamie Johnson, former student body vice president, told the elections commission that they could not speak at the meeting to explain Scott Sullivan, Mike Walden and the Unite coalition's campaign violations and punishments to the joint Senate.
Johnson said Senate had a long tradition of not discussing election activities in the Senate office or in meetings.
But Jason Fizell, Olathe junior and former student body presidential candidate, said Johnson's decision illustrated how many people in the Senate protect each other.
"I wish all the new senators could have heard the commission speak," Fizell said. "I'm not sure some of them really know what went on."
He added that he hoped Sullivan would move forward as president and successfully lead the newly elected senators next year.
"Hopefully he will do his best to own up to it and get on with his job," Fizell said referring to controversy surrounding Sullivan.
After Walden took the gavel from Johnson, the new Senate approved Sullivan's executive staff appointments.
Kelly Huffman, Bellevue, Neb., junior,
will be the student executive committee
chairman. Tom Preheim, Hutchinson
jonior, will serve as treasurer. David
Reynoldson, Junction City junior, will be
the assistant treasurer.
Kristen Hall, Austin, Texas, junior, will be the executive secretary. Samantha Bowman, Wichita junior, will be the legislative director, and Emily Heath, Ozawiek sophomore, and Jaimie Najim, Wichita junior, will serve as co-directors for the Center for Community Outreach.
New findings show faults in theory
KU professor's research adds angle to Einstein
By Tim Harrington Special to the Kansan
John Ralston and Borge Nodlain have spent the last two years trying to prove themselves wrong. That's what good scientists do when they find that their data contradict Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
When Ralston, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, and Nodland, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester in New York could not find any errors, the media descended upon them.
More than 25 newspapers, television stations,
magazines and radio stations sought Ralston
and Nodland when they finally announced their
findings last Thursday.
The cause of this media frenzy spurs from Rilston and Nodland's finding that light seems to travel faster in one direction through space as opposed to other directions.
These findings are in direct contrast with Einstein's theory of special relativity which states that all light travels at the same speed through a vacuum.
There appears to be a universal axis, at least part of which runs directly through Earth, that acts on light waves and other forms of radiation causing them to corkscrew through the cosmos faster than radiation waves not traveling on the axis.
"The fundamental question is: How do we know that the universe is the same in all directions?"
John Raiston
professor of physics and astronomy
Ralston and Nodland's findings also call into question the standard usage of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which assumes that space is completely nondirectional. That is to say, there is no up or down in space.
Ralston and Nodland's discovery suggests that there may be what Ralston calls a cosmological North Star that orients the universe.
"The fundamental question is: How do we know that the universe is the same in all directions?" Ralston said. "The answer is that that is a prejudice. We tested that prejudice, and we think we proved it wrong."
While the two researchers want to stress that the effect they have discovered is small enough that it may be incorporated into Einstein's theory and not necessarily disprove them, the results have certainly caught the attention of the news-hungry national media.
Nodland is a former KU graduate student and an example of Baldson's.
"I never dreamed we would get this much attention," Nodland said. "I got on TV on CNN's World's View."
Ralston was just as surprised as Nodland at their new-found fame.
"I've been in newspapers before but never the front page of The New York Times," Ralston said.
So far, newspapers, magazines and television and radio stations from five different nations have come looking for more details. And Ralston's home page on the web has become so jammed with more than 1,500 hits in the last three days that at times it is inaccessible.
"We're in the sixteenth minute of our 15 minutes of fame, so we'll see it if she." Ralston said.
Ralston and Nodland say that their conclusions are only as good as their data, which will undoubtedly undergo years of careful scrutiny. They may well end up having made a major contribution to the revision of one of physics' most fundamental concepts and a serious rethinking of the well-established Big Bang theory of cosmic creation.
The research, started in 1993 as Nodland's doctoral thesis, had its findings published in Monday's Physical Review Letters.
Their research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and K-STAR, the Kansas Science and Technology and Advanced Research Program.
As Ralston said, "God may have given the universe a twist when he gave it a toss in the first place."
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