THURSDAY, MAY 2, 1996
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS 864-4810
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
SECTION A VOL.102, NO.146
ADVERTISING 864-4358
(USPS 650-640)
SPORTS
Losing streak ends
The Kansas baseball team snapped a five-game losing streak yesterday. Page 1B
CAMPUS
Finals and diet
Nutritionists say that proper rest and good nutrition are the first steps to success on exams. Page 6A
NATION
Ron Levin alive?
Leader of Billionaire Boys Club, convicted of Levin's murder, asks for a new trial. Page 7A
WORLD
Arafat lashes out
PLO leader condemns Israel for keeping borders closed. Page 8A
WEATHER
Morning Showers
High 77° Low 45°
Weather: Page 2A
INDEX
Opinion . . . . . . . 4A
National News . . . . 7A
World News. . . . . 8A
Scoreboard. . . . . 2B
Horoscopes. . . . . 5B
The University Daily Kansan is the student newspaper of the University of Kansas. The first copy is paid through the student activity fee. Additional copies of the Kansan are 25 cents.
Native Americans voice concerns
By Susanna Löof
Kansan staff writer
Native-American remains ought to be given back to their tribes, The University Daily Kansan's opinion page staff ought to be more sensitive and Native-American clothing ought to be allowed as an alternative to caps and gowns at graduation.
Those were the main issues addressed by the Native-American Student Association during a panel discussion on the lawn in front of Fraser Hall yesterday afternoon.
Pemina Yellow Bird, Lawrence resident and representative of the North Dakota Intertribal Reinterment Committee, said to the audience of about
60 students that the remains of the 219 ancestors that are kept in boxes by the University of Kansas are not only languishing, but also suffering.
"They are wandering between that world and this world, crying and pitiful and lost." she said.
The association had invited representatives from the department of anthropology and the Museum of Anthropology to attend the discussion, but none did.
Alfred Johnson, director of the Museum of Anthropology and professor of anthropology, said he did not attend the discussion because he did not expect it to give fruitful results.
"I didn't see any need to go over
things that I've already gone over and hear things that have already been heard several times," he said.
The Native-American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990, required the University and all other institutions in possession of Native remains to make an inventory of all remains and submit the lists to tribes that are connected to the remains.
According to the law, this had to be done by Nov. 16, 1995, but the University's deadline was extended until yesterday. The inventories are now finished, and the remains will stay at the University until Native-American tribes claim them. Johnson said
Yellow Bird criticized the time it
"Why hasn't the very simple task of listing what they have in their possession been done until now?" she said.
has taken for the University to inventory the remains.
Johnson said that regulations surrounding the inventory process and limited staff and resources made it time consuming.
Paul Todd, editorial editor of the Kansan, participated in the panel discussion. The association invited him because an editorial written by a member of the newspaper's editorial board had upset the association's members.
Todd, Littleton, Colo., senior, apologized for the offensive content of the editorial.
"The editorial went through us, and we were blind to it, and that was wrong," he said.
Todd said that future opinion page staff members would receive sensitivity training.
The panel discussion also addressed the wish of a Native-American student to wear a Native American dress instead of a cap and gown at commencement.
Michael Haney, a participant in the discussion and executive director of the Glenpool, Okla., office of the American Indian Arbitration Institute, said he supported the student's wish and that he urged all students to do the same.
WILL THEBUSES STOP?
As KU on Wheels rolls deeper and deeper into debt, Student Senate,the administration and KU students are wondering if the buses will run as usual
Story by Nicole Kennedy
nne Michaels depends on KU on Wheels.
a KU bus route.
kU on Wheels. When she and her husband bought a home, they specifically looked for one on
"We looked at some homes in North Lawrence and that was kind of a big problem that there were no buses at all," said Michaels, Lawrence graduate student.
They settled on a home in East Lawrence, so she could ride a bus to campus.
When the weather is nice, she walks or rides her bike.
But in the dead of winter, she rides one of the 19 buses supported with $400,000 each year from KU's Student Senate.
Part of those predictions hinge on the outcome of competitive bidding for the contract to run KU's buses, which begins today.
Next year, however, Michaels may be left out in the cold.
Photos by Tyler Wirken
In fact, many students who live off campus could be without a ride if transportation board members' gloomy predictions come true.
No one seems to know exactly what's in store for KU on Wheels, but given its financial situation, without more money from the University or the city of Lawrence, students may be left stranded at the bus stop next Fall.
Leaving the buses in the hands of students has led to a series of disasters for KU on Wheels.
MISSING FUNDS
Students got into the bus business in 1971 to save the ailing Lawrence Bus Co. from financial ruin. Reports in 1971 that the bus company was sinking deep into debt, and that the bus service might end, brought
Student Senate to the rescue. Senate began a business relationship that year with the Lawrence Bus Company that continues today.
Past board decisions to expand routes and raise bus pass prices, an enrollment drop at the University and Senate decisions not to increase the bus subsidy have contributed to KU on Wheels' financial woes.
But the bus system continues to face a monetary meltdown.
Steve McMurray became the first student coordinator for the bus system in 1974. He embezzled $257,000 while serving as coordinator. He was arrested in September 1982 and served 17 months in a state prison. He was paroled in 1984, but KU on Wheels has never recovered the money.
KU on Wheels has been plagued by serious problems through the years.
David Hardy, former adviser to the transportation board, said new safeguards had been added since the embezzlement.
Today, the board's finances are examined through both internal and external auditing systems.
In theory, Hardy said, a student-run bus system was a good thing.
"The problem was that without some additional oversight or advice from the University, the system got into trouble," Hardy said.
But transportation board members admit that KU on Wheels never fully recovered from the embezzlement.
"There's probably overkill in checking," Hardy said. "We do that because we don't want that to happen again."
PROBLEMS CONTINUE
Students continue to run the bus system, and KU on Wheels is still plagued by serious problems:
Student Senate bailed out the bus system this semester with an emergency $140,000 loan. Student fees also were increased by $2 to finance the bus system. Before the recent fee increase, students paid a $12 transportation fee per semester. Next year the bus system will get $28 from every student, regardless of whether he or she rides the bus.
- The transportation board has raised bus pass prices by $47 during the past 20 years. Prices have increased by $20 since 1992 alone, and a bus pass now costs more than a student parking permit.
Through the years, KU on Wheels continued to expand routes, following students as they moved farther from campus. At the time, the board was able to pay for the new routes. But ridership dropped. Bus pass sales decreased and newly added routes such as West 6th became nearly impossible to operate efficiently.
Just how bad things are now is hard to determine. Chris Ogle, owner of the Lawrence Bus Co., has been the only vendor to hold the bus contract. Now board members fear he will raise, not lower, the bus contract price in the face of competition.
Although transportation board members receive free bus passes, they don't consistently ride the buses. Their decisions, therefore, are often based solely on ridership statistics provided by Ogle.
The figures Ogle provides only indicate the total number of riders on each bus on an average day, making it impossible for board members to determine where riders get on and off buses. Often, board members say, the ridership numbers misrepresent how many students are using buses to travel off campus and how many are using the buses just to ride on campus.
Since board members don't ride the buses
themselves, and can't afford to pay for a consulting firm to produce more detailed ridership figures, decisions made about changing or adding off-campus bus routes rely on the information provided by Ogle.
"We are aware of the problem that could potentially exist from using just those numbers," said Ken Martin, transportation board member.
In a 1992 letter to David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, Hardy wrote that for a number of years the board had only one or two members who were regular users of the system. For several years, Hardy wrote, no member of the board had been a regular user of the system.
"While the manual requires members of the board to ride the buses periodically in order to receive a bus pass, this is not always done with dispatch, and there are months at a time when there are members of the board who have not been on a bus," Hardy wrote.
As a result of incomplete ridership statistics, routes like East Lawrence, which are often used by students riding from the Hill to Naismith and Oliver Halls, continue to travel far into East Lawrence for only a few student riders each day.
“It’s very difficult to make those decisions when you have no idea what the impact will be because you’ve never actually ridden a bus,” Hardy said.
But Scott Sullivan, transportation board member, said board members knew the system well enough to make decisions about routes.
FEWER RIDERS, LONGER ROUTES
KU on Wheels is so muddled, say board members, that the University or the city of
See KU on Wheels, Page 5A.