CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, March 20, 1996
3A
City limits parking on roads by campus
Kansan staff report
Finding a parking place during men's home basketball games will be even tougher next season.
The Lawrence City Commission voted last night to draft an ordinance making it illegal to park along one side of six streets near the KU campus.
The decision came after the Lawrence Fire Department expressed concerns about not being able to get fire trucks down the narrow streets during KU men's home basketball games.
Portions of 19th Terrace, 20th Street, 20th Terrace, Clifton Court, Emerald Drive and Hillview Road will be no-parking zones from Nov. 1 through March 31 each year.
Lawrence resident Ron Dietz, who lives at 2032 Emerald Drive, said KU's parking problems spilled into the surrounding neighborhoods. The problem was exacerbated when parking was removed to build a new soccer field, he said.
Mayor Bob Moody said he was frustrated that the University had not consulted with the city about potential city parking problems before deciding where to construct the new field.
"The University can take action without the benefit of input from the city," Moody said. "From the city's perspective, what has happened could have been foreseen."
The Traffic Safety Commission will notify the University administration about the changes.
Commission hears skateboarding woes
Existing ordinance repeatedly violated
By Sarah Morrison Kansan staff writer
The Lawrence City Commission is considering constructing a skateboarding park to help rid Massachusetts Street of juveniles illegally riding skateboards.
The issue was placed on last night's agenda after David Longhurst, president of Downtown Lawrence, Inc., wrote and asked the commission to strengthen the ordinance by allowing police officers to confiscate the skateboards of juvenile offenders and to expand the no-skate zone to Vermont and New Hampshire streets.
The existing city ordinance makes it illegal to skate on Massachusetts Street and Jayhawk Boulevard, but Lawrence police officers cannot enforce the law on juvenile offenders. *
Longhurst said that downtown customers were being harassed and scared away by lawless skateboarders.
"There is an existing ordinance, and that ordinance is being routinely violated," he said. "The result is a kid who is 12, 13 or 14 years old, will terrorize people on the sidewalk and tell anyone who tries to intervene to go to hell."
Ben Tuttle, manager of Let It Ride, 69 Vermont St., said confiscating skateboards would only make the problem worse.
"Confiscating a skateboard is not the solution to the skateboarding problem," Tuttle said. "It will give kids a negative attitude toward authority."
Instead, the city should consider building a park where skaters can
ride, he said. One reason skaters like to skate downtown is because of obstacles such as curbs and benches that challenge them.
"There is no way you can 100 percent solve the problem, but creating a park area to skate in is going to help the problem." Tuttle said.
The commission directed staff to look at the feasibility of constructing a park, the legality of giving police the authority to confiscate juvenile violators' skateboards and expanding the no-skate zone.
Mary Downing, a downtown business owner, told the commission they needed to act before someone got hurt.
"Skateboarding has gotten to the point where it is an accident waiting to happen," Downing said. "We have a problem here, and now it will only get worse as the weather warms up. I urge you to do what you can to help downtown Lawrence."
Spring break trip reunites family
Student visits home after four years away
By Scott MacWilliams Kansan staff writer
Kansan staff writer
Sara Espinoza-Toro is taking an 8.000-mile trip for spring break. But she hasn't told her parents where she will be going.
Sara Espinoza-Toro, Lima, Peru, senior, works with a viscometer in a Learned Hall laboratory. Espinoza-Toro will finish her chemical engineering degree this spring and will return to Peru for spring break to work as an interpreter and to surprise her family by visiting.
"My parents don't know that I will be coming home, so I am just going to show up at their front door," Espinosa-Toro said. "I told my mom that a friend named Sara Nickname was coming to visit and that she would carry a sunflower."
Espinoza-Toro, Lima, Peru, senior, will be going home for the first time since arriving at KU four years ago as a freshman Fulbright Scholar.
Espinoza-Toro said that both of her brothers were in on the secret and had helped her arrange the surprise.
Jolen wants to establish the company's oil and gas operation into Peru.
Espinoza-Toro will be on a working vacation. Her round-trip ticket was paid for by Jolen Operating Company of Oklahoma City.
Espinoza-Toro will spend the week as Jolen's interpreter, consultant and adviser in the initial negotiations between Jolen and the Peruvian national oil company.
Espinoza-Toro has prepared herself for this role by taking classes well outside her chemical engineering program.
"Sara is simply the most amazing student that I have ever had the pleasure of being around," said Marylee Southard, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and Espinoza-Toro's academic adviser.
"I find it incredible that she has managed to become fluent in French as well and take advanced courses in economics in order to assess situations in international terms," Southard said.
Southard said Espinoza-Toro had educated herself about her indigenous culture, studying the ancient Inca fortress city Machu Picchu and the Amazon river basin.
"She has trained herself in all these dis-
cipiides with the idea of becoming a technological diplomat," Southard said.
Southard said Amoco Oil Company already had promised Espinoza-Toro a job after graduation in the international exploration division.
Amoco also will take care of all the immigration paperwork for Espinoza-Toro to receive a green card, Southard said.
"If she wanted to be a nun, I think she would be the next Mother Teresa," said Mohamed El-Hodiri, professor of economics. "She has a wide and deep interest in all of humanity, and really wants to help people in developing countries."
Dpn Green, distinguished professor of chemical and petroleum engineering, said he had supervised Espinoza-Toro as a research assistant on an oil recovery project. Her concern for people always is evident, Green said.
"I want to use my skills to help developing nations connect with the companies that can invest money and create jobs in those countries," Espinoza-Toro said. "I took French for four years so I could
Espinosa-Toro said that her long-term goal was to work for the United Nations but that it was very difficult to get a job with the organization right out of college.
work in a French-speaking country if I got a chance. Besides, learning another language gives you such a window into other cultures."
"One thing Sara has taught me is how someone can visualize their goals, see themselves already there, and then do the hard work to make those things happen," Southard said. "She is the embodiment of that principle of reaching goals."
Steve Puppe / KANSAN
Christopher Foster, Los Gatos, Calif., graduate student, Katherine Smith, Beavercreek, Ohio, junior, and Michael Schmitt, Chesapeake, Va., graduate student, bear the cold to promote National Meatout Day. Students who pledged to participate will not eat meat today.
Students give up meat,but not for Lent
Campus group observes Great American Meatout
By R. Adam Ward Kansan staff writer
Before buying a hamburger at the Kansas Union to start the day with a healthy dose of protein, students might want to consider that today is the Great American Meatout.
In the Kansas Union and at Wescoe Terrace, students at Great American Meatout tables warned their peers about the environmental costs and health risks associated with eating meat.
"I started it because I felt the American people deserved one day a year to get a contrasting point of view to the one the meat industry provides 365 days a year." said Alex Hershaft, founder of the 12-year-old Great American Meatout.
Michael Schmitt, Chesapeake, Va., graduate student, said the goal of the event, organized by the Farm Animal Reform Movement, was to educate people about the risks of eating meat.
He said that in addition to the highly publicized health risks associated with eating meat, many illnesses that people assumed were colds and flus were actually from salmonella bacteria.
Members of Proponents of Animal Liberation and KU Environs have been distributing fliers and accepting pledges since Monday in preparation for the event. Those who sign up pledge to try a vegetarian diet for the day.
Brian Moore, Kansas City, Mo., graduate student, said the idea behind the pledge was to show people how easy it was to maintain a vegetarian diet.
But not everyone who stopped by the table was open to the idea. Moore said.
"People are not comfortable with questioning a societal norm, and they typically express that with a negative reaction," Moore said.
He said the most negative response he had gotten was that the good Lord had created cows for people to eat.
But many of the students who have stopped by the Wescoe Terrace table were sympathetic to the group's message.
April Smith, Overland Park junior, said that she didn't eat a lot of meat and that she thought it would be easy to follow a vegetarian diet for a day.
She said she didn't think it would be possible to stav a vegetarian for the rest of her life, though.
Niki Beals, Manhattan freshman, said that she already was a vegetarian and that she was signing the petition to show support.
Beals said she chose a vegetarian lifestyle for environmental reasons and because she knew her body was more efficient when she did not eat meat.