First day returns indicate big vote
By MARTHA
MANGELSDORF
Kansan Stake Writer
More than 2,300 students turned out to vote on the first day of campus elections. This was nearly double last year's first day vote and more than the total vote for the February Senate Code election.
Chuck Loveland, Riley senior and Martha Fowler, Osawatomi junior, the All-Student Council (ASC) election committee co-chairmen, confirmed these results late last night.
Loveland said he thought the large returns were all due to the candidates and the varying stands on major issues the different slates had taken.
"The students seem more concerned with having able personnel to initiate the new Senate Code," Loveland said. "I think, in general, the student body is getting more caught up in their own government and politics."
Miss Fowler said a major factor appeared to be the increased number of candidates running with whom more students could identify with
"The candidates must be given the most credit," she said. Their slates and issues stimulated more students this year when KU was ready to be stimulated. The last couple of years has been a stalemate, but now under the
Code, students can take an active role in government and want to begin by voting."
Polls will be open today form 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Strong Hall, the Kansas Union and Murphy Hall.
Polls were open last night, for the first time, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. in Oliver Hall, Gertrude Sellards Pearson Hall and Ellsworth Hall. The colleges-within-a-college supplied the elections officals and the ASC elections committee provided the supervisors.
Nearly 700 of the approximate 2,300 voters cast ballots in the living groups, which Loveland and Miss Fowler said contributed to the unusually high first day vote.
None of the 2,300 votes have been tabulated. Ballot counting by computer will begin tonight about 6:30 p.m. and the elections committee will begin announcing results at approximately 8:30 p.m.
Loveland said the exact announcement times are hard to speculate due to the many variables affecting the counting process. Bent cards, incorrect initial sorting and pen marks on the ballots rather than pencil make many more votes to be counted by hand and slow the entire process.
The tabulations will come from the counting room and be posted or announced, Loveland (Continued to page 16)
Photo by Ron Bishop
Lawrence, Kansas
Thursday, April 24, 1969
79th Year, No.117
Part of a record-breaking total
KU students turned out in record numbers today to vote in a hotly contested student body election. At stake were seats in the new Student Senate, as well as the presidency and vice-presidency of the student body.
VOTE TODAY!
Strikes mar campuses
UDK News Roundup
By United Press International
Texan gets new eye
HOUSTON - John Madden, a 55-year-old Conroe, Tex., photo shop owner whose eyes are stitched shut, must wait three weeks to learn if history's first total eye transplant will let him see. A leading specialist said yesterday it would be "the miracle of the day" if the operation works.
Madden, who received a new green-gray right eye in a one-hour operation Tuesday, still has a damaged but functioning left eye colored brown.
Arson increases loss
Arthur Ramey, the marshall, said losses were $11,342,042 for 1968, compared with $8.5 million for 1967 and about $7 million for 1966.
TOPEKA The state fire marshall said yesterday arson was a primary cause of increased dollar losses by fire in the state in 1968
Secret talks may be soon
PARIS - The U.S. delegation at the Vietnam peace conference has detected signs that the Viet Cong may soon enter into secret political negotiations with the Saigon government, a highly placed Allied source said yesterday.
Such a move could lead to a breakthrough in the stalemate which has gripped the formal conference sessions, the source said.
(Continued to page 16)
CORNELL (UPI) - The faculty of gun-frightened Cornell University surrendered yesterday to the demands of black militants. Bands of students took over the presidents building at American University and the administration building switchboard at Boston State College.
The campus rebellion mushroomed. Building occupations, campus lockouts, student strikes and protest demonstrations spread through dozens of colleges.
Eastern schoolsincluding the Ivy League elite—were especially hard hit by the swelling chorus of dissent by minority but highly vocal groups.
The Cornell faculty voted to meet the demands of black students and nullify disciplinary action
taken last week against five Negroes who were involved in a December demonstration.
Serious crisis
They acted on the recommendation of university President James M. Perkins, who said the university faced "the most serious crisis" in its history.
Demonstration disrupts KU See page 13
Students ended an occupation and "teach-in" at the Cornell gymnasium after the faculty accepted Perkins' advice that they "clean the slate so we can all move forward together" in a "state of peace and safety."
At Boston State, a dozen black students tried to take over the three-story administration building. When other students took down chains strung up by the Negroes, the militants moved into the switchboard room. They said there had been no action for five months on their demands.
Negro and Puerto Rican students chained the gates of City College of New York for a second day, closing the school. Some 1,000 students and faculty members met to settle differences over demands for a 50 per cent enrollment of the minority groups
No funds
Fifty members of the Black Student Association at Memphis, Tenn. State University staged a (Continued to page 16)
Death penalty given Sirhan
LOS ANGELES (UPI) - Sirhan B. Sirhan, certain that not even Jesus Christ could save him from the gas chamber, was condemned yesterday to die for the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
The 25-year-old Arab nonchalantly chewed gum as the jury decreed the death sentence. He told his attorneys he was not surprised and added, "even Jesus Christ could not have saved me."
Appeals of the verdict were expected to stay indefinitely Sirhan's execution for the assassination of the presidential candidate in an Ambassador Hotel pantry last June 5.
Sentencing May 14
His attorneys immediately launched the first of what was expected to be a long series of legal
maneuvers to save Sirhan's life by moving for a new trial. Superior Court Judge Herbert V. Walker set a hearing on the motion for May 14, the same date he will formally impose the death sentence on Sirhan.
Chief defense attorney Grant B. Cooper said he would base his appeals on three things. He thought the judge did not exercise discretion in refusing to accept a guilty plea to first degree murder by Sirhan in return for a life sentence.
He said he would also argue the jury was not properly constituted and, thirdly, he contended Sirhan's notebooks were received in evidence over the defendant's objections.
Chief prosecution attorney Lynn
Compton said he hoped the penalty given Sirhan would deter future political assassins.
"I hope it puts people on notice that we simply cannot tolerate this kind of action as a solution to political or social problems."
After formal sentencing, Sirhan was expected to be moved to a cell on death row at San Quentin prison, the state's maximum security facility north of San Francisco.
The Palestinian Arab immigrant never uttered a word as the woman clerk of the court read the finding of the seven-man, five-woman jury
Dressed in an open-collared blue shirt with no tie and close-fitting black slacks, Sirhan sat at the counsel table where he has been on
(Continued to page 16)