University Daily Kansan / Friday, May 1, 1987
9
Camps and conferences will keep KU busy this summer
Bv JOSEPH REBELLO
Staff writer
This summer, the University of Kansas may have fewer than 10,000 students enrolled in its classes, but it will play host to at least as many junior high and high school students and several hundred lawyers, bankers and weavers.
More than 25 camps and conferences are scheduled to take place between May 15 and Aug. 15. Most of them are special-skills camps for junior high and high school students, but many are conferences for professionals, said John Pattinson, director of camps and conferences in the division of continuing education.
Visitors to the University's camps and conferences come from all parts of the country and range in age from 8-year-olds who attend tennis camps to retired men and women who attend the Elderhostel camp.
David Bushouse, director of the Midwestern Summer Camps, said his office dealt with about 1,500 junior high and high school students who came to attend camps in music, debate, astronomy, computer science and journalism.
one spot and put them in an environment where they can perform better," he said.
And for most University departments that help organize the camps and conferences, the pace is hectic.
"The purpose of the camps is to bring talented kids from all over to
Several thousand students also attend football, tennis, drill and cheerleading camps.
said Ken Stoner, director of student housing.
The students live in residence halls, and looking after them is always a memorable experience.
"It's a different set of challenges because you're dealing with a much younger bunch of kids," he said. "Some of these camps deal with kids 8 to 10 years old, and they've never been away from home before and they're scared."
House backs collider proposal
Staff writer
By TODD COHEN
Kansas' bid for a proposed $6 billion superconducting super collider was given a financial boost yesterday by the Kansas Legislature.
A conference committee report, allocating $250,000 for the project in the state Department of Commerce budget, passed the house yesterday and now awaits Gov. Mike Hayden's signature. Commerce Secretary Harlan Priddle said yesterday that he expected Havden to sign the bill.
Pridkle said the $250,000 would be spent mostly on the state's official site proposal, which will be submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy on August 3. The state already has spent $50,000 on the project.
The Energy Department is scheduled to decide in January 1988 where the SSC will be built. Kansas and 44 other states are competing for
Despite the crowded field, Priddle is optimistic about Kansas. "I know the grass is a lot thicker than the super
collider," he said. "Our site is excellently located."
The Kansas site is 10 miles south of Topeka and 16 miles southwest of Lawrence in Osage County. The SSC, which would be built underground and have a 52-mile circumference, would encircle Lake Pomona.
Equally enthusiastic is Frank Wilson, senior scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey on KU's West Campus. Wilson and four others at the survey are researching the Kansas site. His group is investigating various agencies are preparing Kansas' 200-page site proposal.
Wilson, who has worked on the SSC project for a year, said yesterday. "We expect to be in the top 10. We think we have an excellent chance to be number one.
"Everything is looking better and better."
Wilson said the Pomona Lake site almost perfectly matched a "Department of Energy idealized SSC site." The department would send the SSC to
be near a large city, a state university, an international airport, an interstate highway and a railroad. The site also must have abundant natural gas, water and electricity, Wilson said. The Kansas site has all those, plus large surpluses of energy and water, he said.
Kansas also has the stable geology necessary, Wilson said. And Priddle said the soil composition was so good that construction costs would be less in Kansas than other states.
The SSC would take four to five years to build, creating about 4,500 jobs. Once completed, it would have a $270 million annual operating budget and 2,500 permanent jobs.
As a result, states like Illinois, California and Texas are spending millions on their SSC campaigns. Although Kansas has appropriated far less money, Wilson said the state's effort wasn't underfinanced.
"It's not a matter of throwing money at it. It's just that we already know a lot about our geology," Wilson said.
ASK co-director sees year close
By LISA A. MALONEY
Good news for KU students, faculty and administrators came Wednesday when the Kansas Legislature approved KU's 1987 fee release, fiscal year 1988 budget and classified and faculty salary increases.
But for Martie Aaron, co-director of the KU chapter of the Associated Students of Kansas, the news was especially sweet. Aaron and co-director Eddie Watson have spent most of this semester in Topeka, lobbying for the fee release and other student issues.
Aaron's excitement didn't overwhelm her though.
"I'm very happy," she said. "But it
takes so many new projects to
work."
This legislative session, KU faced a legislature that hadn't released fees six years and a tight state budget. Aaron organized student letter-writing campaigns, traveled to Topeka twice a week and brought groups of student senators to Topeka to meet with legislators.
Watson, working in an internship with House Minority Leader Marvin Barkis of Louisburg, spent most of his spare time in Topeka keeping track of the issues.
"I think we did play a role," she said. "Some little disgusting proud part of you savs 'I helped.'"
Many of her fellow student senators say that Aaron's organized assaults on the Legislature were a factor in getting fees released. But Aaron is quick to downplay her and ASK's roles.
Tom Woods, outgoing Senate treasurer, said, "Martie has done a fantastic job with ASK. She took the time to learn the system and mounted a massive campaign."
Making a face, Aaron said, “I’ve been told that I have ‘unrelenting energy.’ I care. Energy doesn’t just come from an undirected force. Anybody who sits back, as I have, near graduation, starts to realize the role the University has played in your life.”
ASK has chapters run by student governments at Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, Wichita State University and KU.
Each ASK chapter pays dues based on its number of students. The dues pay the salaries of two full-time legislative lobbyists in Topeka, Mark Tallman and Chris Graves. But student members also are expected to make trips to the state house to talk to legislators.
Aaron said that part of ASK's success lay in the fact that appeals from students looked more genuine than those from faculty or administrators.
"We're the education consumers," Aaron said.
State Sen. Wint Winter, R-Lawrence, said, "Students have always been a sleeping giant in terms of lobbying power.
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"Martie combines an approach with very well thought out arguments with a refreshing, informal, non-professional style."
Aaron said, "At the University you practice be an adult. Part of that has to be getting involved in political activism for the first time. Maybe you can't fight city hall, but you can woo the state legislature."
Tallman said, "It's probably safe to say that Martie is one of the most successful campus directors of ASK.
"She's very dedicated to getting the job done and has the pure talent and intelligence."
ASK usually attracts students with leadership abilities, Tallman said, but few of them make the organization their first priority, like Aaron has.
Aaron will graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in sociology and philosophy, and will start law school at KU this summer. She doesn't plan to practice law, however. Instead, she wants to eventually work in state government.
Next fall, Aaron plans to organize a campaign to get at least 200 KU students to lobby their senators and representatives for higher education concerns. The plan would include a phone campaign where students would call KU alumni and ask them to write legislators, and an "Assault on Topeka" day, when she hopes to gather at least 400 student ASK members at the state house.
She also will take over as sole ASK campus director in June and monitor some of the state House interim
Martie Aaron, Wichita senior, is co-director of the KU chapter of Associated Students of Kansas.
committees.
Aaron also was a residence assistant at Gertrude Sellars Pearson-Corbin Hall this year, a job she said she enjoyed.
"Sometimes I wonder that there's an incredible comparison between the Kansas Legislature and a freshman girls' dorm," she said.
"I love helping. Freshmen are so wonderful because they're so fascinated," she said. "Everything is so new to them."
Aaron said she didn't mind not having any free time because she enjoyed her work at the Legislature and with GSP-Corbin residents.
"Sometimes I say I'm going home to charge my car after five years of college. I burn it."
"Any time anyone's doing a job they love, that's when you don't need free time." she said
CONGRATULATIONS DELTA GAMMA NEW INITIATES
...AND GET READY FOR A GREAT DEBUTANTE BALL!
BYPASS BROKERS UNCONVINCING
In a letter to the April 22nd Journal World, Ms. Rusty Thomas claims that some of those attending the April 20th public meeting at South Junior High about the proposed bypass "chose...to sling mud at our county commissioners and others in the audience whose opinions on this project differed from theirs." Although seated only a short distance from Ms. Thomas, I confess to having missed the mud-slinging she detected. However, I did hear several obviously informed Douglas County residents voice their concerns about both the irreparable environmental damage that would result from this bypass' construction and the special treatment allegedly being accorded several prominent Lawrencians (at least one of whom was present) by the bypass brokers.
After Ms. Thomas spoke, I arose and noted that no one in the preceding five hours of discussion had even considered how a system of public transportation could resolve this dispute. Certainly the combination of a growing city and an exit-laden so-called bypass can only create additional traffic problems and thus generate demand for another lengthy economic development stimulus necessitating the governmental acquisition of yet more private property.
Virtually all of the bypass brokers, who seem to me eager to see our government seize inherently valuable private property so that millions of public dollars might be spent constructing this boondoggle, adamantly oppose a subsidized system of public transportation although such a system would not deprive anyone of his property while reducing the vehicle glut. But even a public transportation system, running 7 days a week on routes covering the city, could not succeed without some help from the legal establishment.
Because many junior high, high school and university students regularly drive privately-owned motor vehicles, our city needs a set of ordinances which would lead these students from their vehicles into publicly-owned buses.
Because corporate cads long ago concluded that their respective corporations would enjoy greater profits by using larger (and noisier) trucks for transportation purposes, our city needs a noise ordinance, a police force large enough to enforce this ordinance, and a judiciary committed to punishing individuals, groups, businesses, or corporations who violate it.
William Dann
2702 W. 24th Street Terrace
I recently drove a blind woman to her destination after watching her inch along the fence on Iowa Street's east side south of University Drive. There is something fundamentally wrong with any governing body willing to spend thousands of dollars on an airport primarily designed to impress alien elitists and millions of dollars on a bypass primarily designed to benefit local elitists, while it ignores the transportation needs of beleaguered constituents.
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