Send in the clouds
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Details, page 2
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Wednesday
February 18, 1987
Vol. 97, No. 98
(USPS 650-640)
KU panel advises abolition of open admission policy
By BENJAMIN HALL
Staff writer
A Kansas high school diploma isn't proof a student is ready for college, some KU administrators say.
Bruce Lindvall, director of admissions, chaired a KU task force that recommended that the Board of Regents abandon its policy of admitting into Regents schools any graduate of an accredited Kansas high school.
Specifically, the task force recommended that students be required to take certain amounts of English, mathematics, social studies, science and foreign language for admission into state schools.
"I think the purpose of any admissions policy is to guarantee students that they have a pretty good chance of succeeding once they enroll in the University," Lindvall said yesterday. "It's more than just getting bodies here."
Some state legislators seem to share the task force's concern. Two bills now in the Kansas House seek to bollie the Regents open admission policy.
The KU task force, which focused on student recruitment, reported this semester to David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs.
The Regents now recommend that high school students prepare for college by taking four years of English, three years of mathematics, three years of social studies, three years of natural sciences and two years of foreign languages.
The KU report said Regents schools should require this coursework for admission, not just recommend it.
Lindvall said remedial courses,
such as English 050 and Math 000.
drained the University's resources.
Mark Tallman, director of legislative affairs for Associated Students of Kansas, a lobbying group, said universities in the Regents system spent $711,231 teaching remedial courses in fiscal year 1985.
Under one bill now in the House, the Regents standards would become requirements for guaranteed admission into the Regents system. But students who didn't meet the requirements still could be admitted by universities under the bill, Tallman said.
The other bill would allow each Regents school to set its own admission requirements.
Tallman said ASK supported an open admission policy. But the group would support staff requirements he said, if KU students wanted them.
Mike Browning, supervisor of student services at Lawrence High School, said some Kansas high schools did not have proposals proposed by the KU task force.
"Lawrence High is an exception," he said. "Sure, we can do it. But can Eudora and DeSoto and Clearwater, Kansas?"
Cuts in public education financing would make it difficult to revamp high school programs. Browning said.
The state first should explore the possible ramifications of the proposal before approving legislation, he said.
"They had better spend some time thinking about this." he said.
Browning said the state had stiffened high school graduation requirements in the past few years. High
See ADMIT, p. 6, col. 3
In-state tuition plan advances to Senate
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — A bill easing state university tuition requirements yesterday won passage in the Kansas House
The measure, which advanced to the Senate for consideration, received tentative approval after a brief debate Monday.
The tuition bill, which the chamber passed on a vote of 116-4, would allow the state Board of Regents to exempt certain people from paying non-resident university tuition and fees. The non-resident rates generally are more than double the rates for Kansas residents.
an accredited Kansas high school would be eligible for resident tuition rates.
Under the measure, all people who enroll in one of the six state universities and Kansas Technical Institute within 12 months of graduation from
Rep. Vern Williams, R-Wichita,
promoted the measure during debate
and said some recent Kansas high
school graduates were forced to pay
nonresident tuition because after
separation, their parents moved
from Kansas.
In addition, the bill would allow non-resident tuition to be waived for employees of state educational institutions, military personnel, people who have lost resident status within six months of enrollment, and people who have been recruited for full-time employment by a Kansas company.
L. A. Rauch KANSAN
Williams said that the situation was unfair to students who wanted to attend school in a location they still considered to be their home state.
At Kansas City International Airport, Mark Praeger asks his wife, Lawrence Maya Sandra Praeger, why she didn't call while she was in Moscow.
4 Kansans bring hope from Moscow
attending a peace conference. She replied that she was unable to get through.
By TODD COHEN
"We are here from Russia with love," said Swan, who is chairman of Lawrence Meeting for Peace.
Four globe-trotting Kansans emerged from behind the Iron Curtain yesterday weary but full of hope about future relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the possibility of a Lawrence superpowers summit.
Lawrence Mayor Sandra Praeger, City Commissioner David Longhurst, local peace activist Bob Swan and Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephan arrived at Kansas City International Airport about 9:30 p.m. yesterday.
The four were among more than 1,000 people from 80 nations who attended a peace conference in Moscow at which Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov spoke. The four were in the Soviet Union for a week.
Family, friends and the glare of television cameras greeted the group. Stephan was given a white carnation from his staff, and Praeger showed off a new Russian fur cap.
Swan, who had traveled to the Soviet Union before this trip, said he saw a different country this time.
"I left the Soviet Union without any depression. We'd seen some changes and hope we'd never seen before," he said.
Swan said a group of Soviet athletes and veterans who visited Lawrence in 1983 and last spring would try in the next month to deliver invitations to Gorbachev to President Reagan in Lawrence.
The improved atmosphere in the Soviet Union gave him hope that Lawrence's peace initiatives would succeed, Swan said.
"I saw a reaffirmation of citizen diplomacy," he said.
Praeger said she personally gave Raisa Gorbache a key to the city of Lawrence at a reception and invited her to the city.
"She said she accepted the key as if it was a key to my heart," Praeger said.
Praeger said that although there was no official confirmation from Soviet officials, she was certain the invitation would be taken seriously.
Praeger and Bob Swan, chairman of Meeting for Peace, speak to KMBC TV reporter Bev Chapman and other reporters. The four Kansas delegates held a press conference immediately after arriving last night at Kansas City International Airport
"The people in Moscow were interested in us," she said.
Praeger said the Kansans were interviewed by Pravda, the official Soviet newspaper, and Moscow radio.
When they returned to Washington yesterday after a 12-hour flight from Moscow, the group was interviewed by Soviet Life, a magazine published by the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Longhurst said the peace conference was divided between speeches in a main hall and separate roundtables at which participants discussed approaches to peace.
"The most important thing about the conference was the dialogue," Longhurst said.
"There was a recognition of interdependence. Implications of a
See MOSCOW, p. 6, col. 5
INSIDE
Janae Willse, Miss Kansas runner-up, just watched last night's Miss USA pageant. Next year, she hopes to represent the state in the event. See story page 3.
The men's tennis team will become the first Kansas tennis team to play in a national event when it plays its first-round match today in the ITCNA National Team Indoor Championship at Louisville. See story page 13.
First time
Maybe next year
Gates talks about arms sale at confirmation hearings
WASHINGTON — Robert M. Gates, the professional intelligence officer nominated to run the CIA, testified yesterday that he would consider resigning if ordered by the White House to conceal a covert operation from Congress for more than a few days.
The Associated Press
Gates also told the Senate Intelligence Committee that CIA involvement in the secret plan to sell arms to Iran's revolutionary government was a unique activity that should not be repeated.
But Gates said he would have been irresponsible had he relied on what he said was flimsy information available to him early last October to inform Congress about the possible diversion of Iranian arms-sales profits to Nicaragua contras.
Gates, a 43-year-old career CIA analyst, was nominated this month to replace William J. Casey, who serves as surgery for a cancerous brain tumor.
The nominee, who would become the youngest person and the third career professional ever to become the head of the CIA, repeatedly
promised to revive a relationship or candor and trust with the congressional committees that oversee the CIA's secret work.
Gates testified that while the CIA had been under presidential orders not to tell Congress about the secret contacts with Iran, the agency was not blameless.
"We did not communicate well enough internally about what was going on," he said. "We should have protested more vigorously our involvement in an operation where there were significant elements unknown to us and where we mistrusted key figures.
For example, he said that CIA agents violated U.S. internal regulations to arrange a November 1985 bombing a bargain of a U.S. weapons to Japan.
"We tolerated ground rules suggested by others that excluded our own experts," Gates said. "I also believe the CIA made an error in not pressing to reverse the directive to withhold prior notification (of Congress) once the operation began to string out in February 1986. The entire undertaking was a unique activity that we are all determined
not to repeat."
Under questioning by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, Gates said that there had been a basic misunderstanding between lawmakers and the executive branch over legislation requiring timely notification of the opening of a covert operation.
Gates said it was clear that members of Congress interpreted that as meaning notification within several days at the most.
But he said that the White House never conceded that point, and the Iran arms sale operation went on for most 10 months before becoming public.
'I believe the long period of with- lading went beyond the bonds of the con- tinent.'
Gates said that if Congress were not notified for a prolonged period and it became apparent that a relationship of trust and candor between the two branches was threatened, "I would contemplate resignation under those circumstances."
He said that if confirmed as CIA director he would recommend that Congress not be kept in the dark on operations for more than a few days.
Faculty pay preserved; bill dies in committee
By JOHN BUZBEE
Staff writer
TOPEKA — The salaries of KU's top faculty and administration are safe for now because a bill to reduce some state officials' salaries died in committee yesterday.
"I hope it stays dead," said Mel Dubnick, chairman of KU's University Senate Executive Committee "It is devoid of ideal ideas and a dangerous idea."
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-
Lawrence, voted against the bill.
The Senate Ways and Means Committee defeated the bill 6.5.
"It chases good people out of the house he said, adding that the proposal was so ugly."
The bill would have reduced by 3.8 percent the pay of state employees who make more than $50,000 a year. It also would have reduced the salary of other state officials specified in the bill.
"Most of the faculty that I've talked to are really outraged that they would think about doing this kind of thing," he said.
But one committee member, State Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Parsons, said, "I don't want to take out the university professors and the preside of the universities. Everybody gets treated the same, if you want to do it."
Before killing the bill, the committee removed the provision reducing the salaries of employees who make more than $50,000. This part of the bill applied to some KU faculty members.
Committee chairman Gus Bogina, R-Lenexa, said that after the provision affecting KU faculty was removed to reinsteal it on the Senate floor
Winter said that even without the pay cut for KU faculty, the bill had it not been killed, could have been used as a floor as a vehicle to get a cut back in.
"We'd go right back on the floor and there would be a bloody fight to get it in," he said.
Without that provision, the bill would have primarily affected judges in the state because most of the other employees mentioned in it already have taken voluntary pay cuts.