University Daily Kansan / Tuesday. March 10, 1987
3
Local Briefs
Vandals cause damage to wall in art building
Vandals, armed with indelible ink pens, caused $1,300 damage to walls in the Art and Design Building in separate incidents between Feb. 28 and Friday, KU police said yesterday.
Campus and Area
Sgt. John Brothers, KU police spokesman, said the graffiti was in a fourth floor hallway. He said the vandals wrote words that appeared to be "architectural jargon."
A 19-year-old Kansas City, Mo., man injured Sunday in a motorcycle accident on 23rd Street and Ousdahl Road remained in critical condition yesterday at the University of Kansas Medical Center last night.
Today marks the first annual Diabetes Awareness Day. Officials at the American Diabetes Association-Kansas Affiliate Inc. said that special activities would take place across the country to mark the event.
The damage estimate was the cost of repainting the walls, Brothers said. Phillip Blackhurst, a painter in Dallas, had said he already been repainted.
19-year-old cyclist still listed critical
KU police are investigating the incidents, Brothers said.
Special activities mark diabetes day
Damon M. Force suffered severe head injuries when the motorcycle he was riding struck a van.
Diabetes is a disease in which the body doesn't properly convert sugars, starches and other food into the energy needed for life. It affects 11 million U.S. citizens and is the nation's third-leading cause of death by disease.
An estimated five million U.S. citizens have diabetes and don't know it. If left untreated, diabetes can cause strokes, kidney disease and blindness.
The warning signs of diabetes are normal constipation, abnormal thirst, rapid weight loss, nausea and vomiting, a family history of diabetes, blurred vision, excessive weight gain and numbness in the feet.
KU band societies receive awards
The University of Kansas chapters of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, national honorary band fraternity and sorority, won several awards at their organization's district convention March 6-8 at the University of Missouri at Rolla.
Kappa Kappa Psi received the District Chapter Achievement Award as the outstanding chapter in the district.
Both chapters won awards for an outstanding scrapbook and a contribution and participation award for the district newsletter. They also were awarded the bid to publish the district newsletter next year.
Elected as Kappa Kappa Psi district officers were Tim Greenwalt, olathe senior, president; and Randy Timpm. Mt. Vernon, Iowa, junior, vice president. Stacy Sabraw, Lawrence sophomore, was elected district secretary treasurer for Tau Beta Sigma.
Bill could restrict faculty union negotiations
TOPEKA — The University of Kansas and private businesses will be able to work together easier under a plan tentatively approved by the Kansas House yesterday, legislators say.
By JOHN BUZBEE
Staff writer
Staff writer
The bill, which faces final approval today, would allow Regents schools to spend money on certain research and development projects without going through a competitive bidding process.
From staff and wire reports.
Normally, state agencies must shop around in a lengthy bidding
process before buying equipment, said State Rep. Phil Kline, R-Overland Park and chairman of the House Economic Development Committee.
"All research is time-driven," he said.
Kline said when private businesses wanted Regents schools to work with them on research, they sometimes needed special equipment and offered to pay for it themselves. But with the schools involved, the purchase could get snagged in red tape, he said.
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence and chairman of the Senate Economic Development Committee, said that under the bill, professors would make sure the state was getting the best deal on purchases.
"They want it now," Klaid said.
"They don't want to wait 67 days to
find out if they can get permission."
"It's the professors who are going to control the money to be sure they are getting a bargain because they don't have enough money anyway," he said.
State purchasing agents can't do as good a job selecting equipment for some projects, he said.
"They don't understand much of the technology that has to be purchased."
Kline said he was surprised that the bill was approved with no debate.
"Usually, people are a little jeery at relaxing competitive bidding," he said.
The bill would exempt universities from competitive bidding requirements only when half the project's cost was paid by a business, federal agency, private person or the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation.
The corporation was created by the state to foster economic development. Its creation last year was spurred by a report by Anthony Redwood, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy and Business Research at KU, and Charles Krider, business professor and research associate at the institute.
The Redwood-Krider report said, in part, universities should cooperate with businesses to help economic development.
The bill is part of the state's renewed effort to strengthen the Kansas economy, and it will help economic development, Kline said.
Amy Rhoads—KANSAN
Don Reich, Andover Organ Company worker, shows the first pipe to come off of the truck at the St. Lawrence Catholic Center, 1631 Crescent Road. The organ arrived at the church yesterday afternoon. The 1,400 pipes that comprise the organ range from one-half of an inch to 16 feet tall.
Scattered pipe organ to sing
By JERRINIEBAUM
Staff writer
New tones will soon reverberate from the walls of the St. Lawrence Catholic Center, 1631 Crescent Road, but right now the $150,000 pipe organ is scattered in pieces throughout the center.
Yesterday afternoon, organ builders from the Andover Organ Company in Lawrence, Mass., and a truck driver from North American Van Lines unpacked and unloaded pieces of the organ that together weighed 16,000 pounds.
George Robertson drove the truck that left Massachusetts on Thursday with the organ pieces packed in 600 blankets.
"I used every pad I had in the truck." Robertson said.
The organ builders, who followed Robertson's bouncing truck, will stay in Kansas for a month, finishing some of the organ's woodwork and assembling and fine-tuning the instrument.
As he carried a piece of the organ into the church, Don Reich, organ builder and designer, said, "We have no idea how many pieces there are. We just hope all of them are here."
Reich used the building's blueprints to specially design the organ so that it would fit into an arched slot on the west wall. Both building and organ are simply designed with rectangles cut into red oak.
ing," Reich said as he examined for the first time the neo-Gothic building in its finished state.
"It's a really handsome build-
Reich visited Lawrence last year to check on final plans for the organ, which took about five months to build. At that time, no windows or doors had been installed in the center, which was dedicated in September.
The Rev. Vincent E. Krische, director of the Catholic center, said, "We ordered the organ staff to start building the building."
He said he hoped the organ would be assembled and ready to be played for Sunday services March 29.
Former State Sen. Harry Darby, R-Kan., who was in the Senate in the 1980s, bought the organ for the Catholic center about two years ago to be dedicated to his late wife. He wanted it to be accessible to KU students and faculty and the church's organizers. Darby died in January at 93.
“His wife was interested in music. He wanted a memory for her that would benefit a lot of people.” “He didn’t believe I’d be able to live to see the orphan.”
The Edith Cobbison Darby Memorial Organ will be formally dedicated in three concerts at 8 p.m. April 10 and 26 and June 8.
its keys. The trackers are moved when the player presses the key. The motion lets air into the pipes, producing a tone.
The new organ is a mechanical tracker organ that has thin brass poles, called trackers, attached to
"You can feel the action," said Laura Ellis, Albert Lea, Minn., graduate student.
Ellis will be one of about 25 KU organ students to use the new organ for lessons and practice.
Ellis said, "To have the size of organ school that we do, we really need to have a diversity of instruments."
Krische said the organ would be the only one of its kind within a 100-mile radius.
Most new organs are electroneutral pipe organs, which operate electronically rather than mechanically.
"When you push the key, it's going to play no matter how you touch it," Ellis said of the electronic organs.
She said she preferred to play the mechanical organ because she felt more in control of the instrument.
Krische was a member of a group of KU professors and Catholic center administrators that chose the Andover company after taking bids from about 20 companies. Among them was the Reuter Pipe Organ Company, 612 New Hampshire St., which specializes in electropneumatic pipe organs.
Plan would delete competitive bids
By BENJAMIN HALL
Staff writer
A Kansas Senate bill that would weaken faculty unions is causing concern at KU, although the intent of the bill remains unclear.
The bill, introduced in the Senate Ways and Means Committee a week ago today, would remove higher education faculty from the Public Employees Relations Act.
"This would fairly well emasulate the right of faculty to negotiate," said Tom Madden, director of KU union efforts for the Kansas National Education Association.
Madden said the bill would separate higher education faculty from other public employees and create a higher education faculty relations
Under the bill, faculty unions could "meet and confer" with their employer but could not negotiate for salaries and benefits.
Madden said the bill would hurt faculty leverage.
"Meet and confer" does not mean collective bargaining, he said.
The bill says, "Nothing in the higher education faculty relations act shall authorize or be construed to authorize the substitution of negotiations or collective bargaining for meeting and conferring . . ."
Neither should the act be construed to require the Board of Regents or
any state educational institution to enter into a formal agreement with faculty, the bill says.
University Senate Executive Committee chairman Mel Dubnick mentioned the bill in a University Council meeting Thursday.
"It certainly changes the rules of the game," Dunbick said Thursday.
The bill would make an exception for Pittsburgh State University, the only Regents school with a faculty union, Dubnick said. Pittsburg State faculty would retain their bargaining rights.
Clifford Griffin, professor of history and a union proponent, said Thursday that attempts had been made before to take faculty out of the bargaining unit. He said he wasn't sure if this was the same sort of attempt.
Dubnick told a SenEx meeting Friday that the implications of the bill might have been inadvertent.
Bruce Cooper, KNEA's director for negotiations and research, said yesterday that the bill might be stronger than was intended.
"It certainly is an unclear situation right now," he said. "It's our understanding that it came out a little farer than more far reaching than was intended.
Staff writer
By TODD COHEN
Hill seeks mall delay until after elections
The city should spend no money, have no meetings and do no work on the proposed downtown mall until after the April 7 general election, a Lawrence city commissioner said yesterday.
Commissioner Howard Hill, who has been a strong supporter of the mall, said he wanted the city to wait for the results of the commission election and the three-question referendum on the mall.
"Any action here would be to put the brakes on until April 7," Hill said. "The first thing is to get the people to vote."
Hill wants the city commission to postpone spending $18,000 for a mall feasibility study and to order the staff not to work on the mall.
He also said the volunteer Urban Renewal Agency and its subcommittees should not meet. The URA was created by the city as a forum for citizen input in the mall's development.
But Hill, who finished a distant fifth in last week's primary, denied that his proposal was politically motivated.
"I'm not trying to mollify anyone. It's not the result of Tuesday's vote," he said.
Mike Wildgen, assistant city manager, said that stopping work for three weeks would not violate the city's contract with developers Jacobs, Visconsi *×* Jacobs, who signed an exclusive contract with the city in 1983 to develop the mall.
A survey of the other four commissioners yesterday indicated that Hill's motion would be adopted at tonight's commission meeting at 7.
Mayor Sandra Praeger and commissioners Mike Amyx, Ernest Angiino and David Longhurst all agreed that Hill's idea was a good one.
Praeger said, "It's awful to ask a volunteer committee to keep working if it's all going to be squelched by the voters in a month."
However, Longhurst, who lost in the primary, said the committee should continue gathering information because it might help voters decide.
Hill said the election should not be decided on the mail issue alone. Other issues, like the city's economy and image also need to be addressed, he said.
Longhurst said that he could not blame Hill for trying to neutralize the mall issue.
"I can appreciate Howard's frustration," Longhurst said.
You!! Wanna Make 100 Bucks?
If you're a registered student organization and can work a poll for Student Senate elections on April 8 & 9, then you can make $100 a day for your group (that's $200 bucks - get it?!)
- applications will be screened (but not necessarily accepted) in the order they were received.
- the committee will close applications after sufficient applications have been accepted.
Only room for 3 more organizations. Inquire at the Student Senate office - 864-3710 ask for Tom Moore or Vic Osmolak