Jayhawks shut out Redhawks Kansas beats Southeast Missouri State, 6-0, in the Best of the Midwest Tournament in Kansas City, Kan. Right-handed pitcher Brendan McNamara struck out 10 Redhawks. PAGE 1B
THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
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KU softball team ready for postseason Coming off its biggest victory of the season against No. 2 Texas, Kansas is entering postseason games with confidence. PAGE 18
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VOL.116 ISSUE 140
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26. 2006
TECHNOLOGY
WWW.KANSAN.COM
Server repair under way
BY KRISTEN JARBOE
kjarboe@kansan.com
KANKSAN STAFF www.kansan.com
Some KU students were still experiencing e-mail problems Tuesday, after the power outage from Sunday night's hailstorm shut down campus computer systems early Monday morning.
Thelma Simons, Information Technology Service manager, said that it was difficult to link the storm directly to Tuesday's computer problems, because the Information Technology Help Desk had received no complaints. Simons recommended that students report problems to the help desk so the specific issue could be tracked down.
E-mail was the first service in line to be restored and was fixed around 6 a.m. Monday. Some services, such as the Kyou Portal, were not restored until the afternoon.
The power outage from Sunday night's storm made several employees from the KU Information Technology Service get up at 1 a.m. to start repairing the network.
After the storm, two feeds from Westar Energy from opposite sides of town were down, which is unusual, Simons said.
Joseph Harrington, associate professor of English, said three of his students had problems with their KU e-mail accounts Tuesday. One student's e-mail was sent back to him from Harrington, tagged as an "undeliverable message."
Harrington said the problem wasn't because of a full e-mail box, but the e-mail eventually came through.
SEE SERVER ON PAGE 4A
HEALTH
Patricia Moody, medical technologist at Watkins Health Center laboratory, tests antibiotic sensitivities in petri dishes. Moody said the most exciting occurrences in the lab were when they discover and isolate unusual organisms. Her favorite was "cat scratch fever," which is an actual organism, not just a song.
Watkins lab sees it all
BY CATHERINE ODSON
codson@kansan.com
KODSON STAFF WRITER
As a child in western Kansas, Patricia Moody used to mix things in the bathroom to see what would happen. She said she was lucky she never came across anything dangerous.
As a medical technologist at Watkins Memorial Health Center, Moody regularly sees dangerous diseases in the center's laboratory while examining petri dish cultures of lab samples.
The five medical technologists at Watkins have more than 100 years of combined experience, said Susan Iversen, medical technologist and lab supervisor. From June 2004 to July 2005, the Watkins lab served 12,600 individual patients and completed more than 16,000 in-house tests, 2,000 more than the year before. About one-third of all Watkins patients, who total more than 400 some days, visit the lab.
"Things that excite us, other people think we're weird." Moody said.
The lab collected blood from 27 potential mumps patients, but the disease is so rare the lab cannot run the tests themselves. After mumps was confirmed on the University's campus, the state stopped running tests from this area and saved the necessary test materials for other regions, Iversen said.
The lab recently received new equipment to test for tuberculosis, the only such equipment at a student health facility in the state, said Myra Strother, staff physician. The test will help international students meet the TB screening requirement without having to travel off campus for the test.
SEE WATKINS ON PAGE 4A
STUDENT SENATE
Referendum polling causes stir
BY NICOLIE KELLEY
nkelley@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
"Oh don't worry about the other stuff. Just click 'yes' here," is what Tom Cox claims the organizers of an unofficial polling site were saying to students when they stopped at the site's table on election day.
Cox, a Shawnee sophomore, was campaigning on election day for Delta Force in front of Budig Hall. He said within a 35 to 45 minute span at least five people he stopped told him they'd already voted at the athlete's table, but didn't know what they were voting on because the people at the table
told them where to click.
Student athletes in support of the referendum to increase women's and non-revenue sports fees set up a campaign table complete with computers for students to vote.
Cox said that he was not "anti-athletics" but he was upset with the way the athletes handled themselves during the election. He said their behavior was unethical and showed how little they respected the election process.
Chris Jones, Iowa City, Iowa senior and member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, said the accusations brought up against the student athletes were "incredibly false" and "ridiculous."
Jones said that during the elections the people working at the athletics table were continually asking questions to the on-site elections commission members, making sure everything they were doing was OK. He said that they never heard any complaints about anything that being done, and that people were getting upset because more people chose to vote at the athletes table than any other.
He said he didn't think the athletes should be punished just because more people cared about their issue. The voter turnout increased this year and Jones said he thought that the
voting table set up by athletes was a big reason for that.
"We did something nobody else has ever done and we deserve credit and praise for that," he said.
The election code states that "Any computer shall constitute a potential polling site and shall be considered an active polling site when a student employs said computer for the purpose of voting."
The code also states that any activity that promotes or discourages the passage of either a candidate or a referendum is subject to the rules of the election code.
SEE REFERENDUM ON PAGE 4A
NUMBER OF VOTES PER REFERENDUM
Below is the breakdown of the number of votes each referendum received on the election ballots.
Women's and non-revenue sports fee increase:
5,316
Multicultural campus fee increase: 4,542
Decrease campus fees by $46 a semester: 4,710
Source: Elections Commission
Sean Hughes, Omaha, Neb., graduate student, applies a glossy sealant to the exterior of the KU engineering team's concrete canoe Tuesday evening. In his second year leading the team, Hughes will travel with the team to compete in Columbia, Mo., this weekend.
SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Jared Gah/KANSAN
Students to race concrete canoe
BY CATHERINE ODSON
codson@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
A 120.5-pound concrete canoe sounds about as logical as a flying pig. But while pigs don't fly, concrete canoes do float, and a group of KU engineering students is out to prove it.
The American Society of Civil Engineers, which sponsors concrete canoe competitions for college students each year, said the trick to building a buoyant concrete canoe was creating "a concrete mix that is lighter than water." Water weighs 62.4 pounds per cubic foot.
Sean Hughes, Omaha, Neb., graduate student said this year's team created a buoyant canoe by using a lightweight concrete made of tiny glass beads that weighs
"When you tell people you're building a concrete canoe, that's the first thing that pops into their minds." Hughes said.
only 53 pounds per cubic foot, compared to regular sand- and rock concrete that weighs more than 140 pounds per cubic foot. That, combined with a hull designed to displace the necessary amount of water, keeps the canoe from sinking.
The student engineers began brainstorming for this year's canoe after last year's regional competition, but did not start working until the 76-page rule book was released in mid-September.
Since then the group has logged more than 450 hours working on the project, including fundraising, design and construction.
SEE CANOE ON PAGE 4A
WEATHER
The 2006 KU concrete canoe is named "Quick n' Dirty" in reference to a simple solution to a complicated problem. The group had to cut corners to finish the project because of the small number of students involved, said Sean Hughes, Omaha, Neb., graduate student. A normal team has between 20-30 members; fewer than 10 students have worked on the KU canoe.
QUICK N' DIRTY
Weight: 120.5 pounds
Length: 20 feet
Width: 26 inches
Thickness: 1/2 inch
Color: Blue and gray with a yellow beak
Cost: $6,130
Source: KU Concrete Canoe team
WEATHER
INDEX
TODAY 66 Partly Cloudy
39 weather.com
THURSDAY 75 47 MODERATE SUNNY
MIDDAY 75 46 SHOWERS
Comics... 5B Crossword... 5B Opinion... 5A
Classifieds... 6B Horoscopes... 5B Sports... 1B
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