Tuesday April 19, 1988
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published since 1889 by the students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 98, No.137 (USPS 650-640)
Board penalizes Integrity Coalition fined for campaign poster violations
By Jeff Moberg
Kansan staff writer.
The Student Senate Elections Review Board at its meeting last night in the Kansas Union fined the Integrity coalition $125 for two campaign violations.
The Integrity coalition has until Monday to pay the fines. If the fines are not paid by Monday, the coalition will demand that seats it won in last week's elections.
First, the review board fined the Integrity coalition $25 for having campaign posters within sight of a polling station.
During the elections, a car with Integrity posters in its windows was parked within sight of the Wesco Hall polling station, which is a violation of campaign procedures, according to Senate rules.
Then, the review board fined Integrity $100 for tapping campaign materials to residence hall doors. One complaint signed by 18 people stated that Integrity campaign fliers were attached to every door on the 10th floor of Ellsworth Hall.
According to Senate rules, it is a requirement to maintain materials using an adhesive layer.
Brian Short, chairman of the board, said the fines were justified because of the number of complaints against the Integrity coalition for illegally posted campaign materials. Other complaints against the coal-related that posters were hung on the exterior of campus buildings and trees.
"They are very reasonable," Short said. "We could have pursued a lot of the other complaints against a certain coalition, which leads you to believe that they were doing something wrong. Because of the sheer number, they were not always complying with regulations."
Brian Kramer, Integrity's vice presidential candidate, declined to comment on the fines when contacted after the meeting. Frank Partnoy, coalition's presidential candidate could not be reached for comment.
The review board also received complaints about posters illegally hung by the Focus and Top Priority coalitions, but the board decided to take no action because of insufficient evidence.
The board decided that in order to fine a coalition for illegally hung posters, the board must have one of its members sign a signed complaint from a witness.
The review board also approved the election results from the press-
identical races and results for Senate seats, except for seats in Numemaker, the School of Social Welfare, resident-at-large, School of Education and liberal arts and sciences.
The review board did not validate the Nunemaker, education and social welfare results because of the fines pending against the Integrity coalition. Four candidates from the coalition won seats in those areas.
Brian Stern, elections committee chairman, said the resident-at-large results would be recounted today because some candidates running for that seat did not receive any votes. One candidate said he knew those results were incorrect because he had voted for himself.
The review board will meet again at 5 p.m. today to approve all three coalitions' campaign audits.
Iran strikes back after U.S. attacks
The Associated Press
MANAMA, Bahrain — U.S. forces destroyed two of Iran's Persian Gulf oil platforms yesterday, sank or damaged four attack boats and disabled two frigates that fired missiles at U.S. planes, U.S. officials reported.
Iranian naval forces responded with attacks on Arab oil facilities; British and Cypriot commercial vessels; and on press helicopter chartered by NBC.
No U.S. casualties were reported, but Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci said that a Cobra attack helicopter with two crewmen was late in returning to a Navy cruiser and that a search had begun.
Yesterday's conflict between the United States and Iran was the most intense since President Reagan last summer ordered that the United States strengthen its Navy forces in
Knight-Ridder Graphic
the gulf, where Iran and Iraq have been at war since September 1980.
Washington called destruction of the oil platforms a "measured response" to the explosion of an
See IRAN, n. 8, col. 1
Students would get more aid from fund
By Elaine Woodford
Kansan staff writer
A proposed Educational Opportunity Fund could put an additional $150,000 into financial aid programs at the University of Kansas.
Jason Krakow, student body president, and other student leaders from Board of Regents schools, proposed at the Regents meeting Thursday that "a percent of proposed tuition to a fund to supplement financial aid."
At KU, $6 from each student's tuition would be put into the fund. Krakow estimated that $150,000 would be available for fall 1989.
"This is purely to supplement what is out there," Krakow said. "There isn't enough state money available to students."
The fund would be supervised at each Regents school by a board consisting of several students and representatives from the office of student affairs and the financial aid office.
The money could be used in many financial aid programs, such as work-study, salaries for student workers on campus, stipends, grants and fellowships. The money also would be made available to the financial aid office. All students and programs would be eligible.
"We want to get the money circulating and into the pockets of KU students," Krakow said.
Krakow said the state of Kansas has been squeezed into a unique posi-
"The state of Kansas isn't much into the black," he said. "Students are taking responsibility for fellow students, which is really admirable."
Ray Haucke, director of planning and budgets for the Regents, said that the Regents were supportive of the plan.
"This will produce $738,000 systemwide for financial aid programs," he said. "We think this is a very feasible program."
Haucke said the local governance of the Educational Opportunity Fund would allow the tailoring of the program to the needs of each cam-
The Associated Students of Kansas, student leaders and staff members from the Regents office will be working to develop the procedures and regulations for the fund.
Janine Swiatkowski/kANSAN
As snug as a bug . . .
Paul Moylan, left, Roeland Park senior, and his roommate, Dean Ketchum, Lake Quivira junior, show preschool children Moylan's insect collection at La Petite Academy, 3211 W. Sikth St. Moylan, a biology major, collected the insects for a class. He has a friend that works at La Petite, and Moylan said he thought yesterday's show and tell with the insects would be a treat for the children.
New Yorkers will vote today
Polls show no clear winner in the Democratic primary race
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Michael Dukakis predicted yesterday that he would post a victory in the New York primary today that would place him firmly on the road to the Democratic presidential nomination, but Jesse Albert Gore Jr. exhorted their supporters to deliver a polling-derived呸.
In its final 24 hours, the campaign was nothing but blunt. New York Mayor Ed Koch, a Gore supporter who has sharply criticized Jackson in recent days, was branded a "hunan" Republican Justin Jackson's campaign manager.
Jackson said Koch's comments about him have "not been good for the city or the campaign." The atmosphere in New York has become "so divisive and so violent" that he is getting more death threats than at any other time in his presidential campaign, said Jackson, who travels
with very tight security.
Late pre-election poll gave Dukakis a lead over Jackson measured in double digits with Gore a distant third, but even so the polls fretted. Turnout was the big unknown in Jackson's outcome, and Jackson spent the last full day of campaigning trying to keep enthusiasm high.
Jackson went into the New York contest a winner. He beat out Dakikis in last night's Democratic caucuses in Delaware, taking 45 percent to Dukakis' 27 percent and Gore's 2 percent.
Dukakis steered clear of the Jackson-Gore-Koch hostilities but caused a flap by refusing to discuss with reporters his early-morning comment that the U.S. action in the Persian Gulf was a "measured response."
A Dukaiks aide told reporters that his early comment had been outdated
In a series of engagements yesterday, U.S. forces destroyed two of Iran's Persian Gulf oil platforms, sank or damaged four attack boats and disabled two frigates that fired missiles at U.S. planes, U.S. officials reported.
by events in the gulf.
Jackson said the early morning fighting with Iran raised new questions about U.S. policy. The weapons used against U.S. troops were "no sold to Iran illegally by the Reagan-Bush administration," he said.
The three Democrats offered differing responses to the administration military action in the Persian Gulf.
Gore endorsed President Reagan's decision to take military action against Iran in the "Persian Gulf." The United States has right" to do what it did, Gore said.
Researchers argue Chernobyl theory Linking fallout to death rate isn't enough proof, prof says
By Ric Brack
Kansan staff writer
A KU professor disputes a theory that a mysterious increase in the U.S. death rate during summer 1986 was caused by fallout from the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
The theory blaming a cloud of radioactive fallout for the increase was put forward by Jay M. Gould, a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. D.C. said in a report in the Jan. 30 issue of the Economist magazine that the fallout from Chernobyl could have hastened the deaths of many U.S. citizens.
“Correlation doesn't prove anything,” Edward Shaw, professor of physiology and cell biology, said yesterday. He stressed that statistics alone couldn't prove a connection between the Chernobyl accident in April 1986.
Gould conducted a computer analysis of U.S. vital statistics for 1986 and found that during the May through August period after the accident, more people in the U.S. died than is usually the case.
That percentage rose to 33.1 percent in 1986. Gould said that was the highest rate this century for May through August, and that it was an increase of 1.1 percent from the 1983 through-1985 average.
Statistics from the government's National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., indicate that the number of people who died in 1986 represents an increase of about 30,000 deaths over 1985.
He calculated the probability that the death rate could increase in such numbers by coincidence alone was less than one in a million.
Not coincidental, though, is the fact that airborne radioactivity reached the United States in early May, 11 days after the Chernobyl accident. However, the radiation levels that were released from the reactor deemed safe by the U.S. government.
For example, milk samples, routine indicators of radioactivity,
showed a peak concentration of about 130 picocuries a liter in Washington state after the radioactive cloud arrived. The 1985 average in the area was less than 7 picocuries per liter Picocuries are a measure of radioactivity.
The 130-picocurie level was less than 1 percent of the level that the U.S. government has deemed safe for milk radioactivity, and between 100 and 1,000 times lower than levels that were recorded across parts of Europe after the accident.
According to Harold Spiker of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the radiation monitoring station in Topeka did register increases in fallout of iodine 131 after the Chernobyl accident. Iodine 131 is a radioactive isotope that was in the cloud.
The correlation between the Chernobyl accident and death rates continues because Gould also found that states where concentrations of iodine are highest the highest were also the states that showed the greatest increase in deaths.
One possibility for the increase has been advanced by Dr. Ernest Sternglass, a professor of radiological sciences at the University of Pittsburgh.
Stern胶液 said that ingested fission products concentrated in vital organs. After they reach those organs, they remain there, emitting radiation and producing free radicals.
Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that gravitate to cell membranes.
Sternglass said the production of hormones and various types of white cells that produce the body's immune system were destroyed or destroyed by the free radicals.
In that way, Sternglass said, radioactivity from Chernobyl might have hastened the deaths in the affected areas of some of those people who already suffered from weakened immune systems because of earlier exposure to radiation or disease.
But Shaw said that to kill cells, much higher levels of radiation than were delivered by the radioactive cloud would be necessary.
Both Gould and Sternglass said that their research, which is in its infancy, is good.
Nursing shortage leaves Med Center struggling to fill staff
By James Buckman
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A current drought in available nursing personnel has caught the University of Kansas Medical Center in the middle of a bidding war.
Kansan staff writer
And the hospital's administration is not sure it is a war they can win.
Most attribute the nursing shortage to low pay, undesirable working hours and fewer students entering nursing schools.
But regardless of the causes, Kay Clawson, executive vice chancellor for the Med Center, said the hospital had 40 unified nursing positions. And the faculty would fill most of those vacancies after students graduate in May, difficulty in retaining the other nurses would advance the problem into next year.
One essential element for attracting nurses is paying competitive salaries. Because the Med Center, a state-controlled institution, must go legislature to get financing for salary, increases it is at a disadvantage
And although a pay increase for Med Center nurses is before the Legislature, Clawson said the passage of that increase would not guarantee an end to the hospital's problems.
"That just escalates the war," he said. "Everybody else sees what you're pegged at, and they can raise above you. The private institutions
Other hospitals know we won't know until the Legislature comes back for their final session. They are making deals with our KU grads even right now.
Med Center
director of nursing services Med Center
- Mary Anne Eisenbise
can do that with a meeting of the board, which is very simple.
"We sometimes have to plan ours (budget) more than a year in advance."
For Mary Anne Eisenbise, director
of nursing services at the Med Center, the problem is especially frustrating as she sees nurses enticed away from the hospital.
"If we go up a cent, they are out there going up twice that much," she said. "We have a nice package before the Legislature right now, but we're not sure if we can trust them. We won't know until the Legislature comes back for their final session."
"They are making deals with our kuU grads even right now, offering many scholarships."
Elsenbise said that the Med Center had confirmed 25 nurses to fill the 40 positions but that even over Easter three of those decided to go elsewhere.
One advantage the Med Center has
"We are facetedly called a finishing school," she said. "Many places in town will offer jobs with two or three thousand dollars more a year for our students getting an excellent nurse if they have been here for one or two years."
in attracting nurses is that as a teaching hospital, it can offer extensive staff educational development. But that, too, can work against the hospital, Eisenbise said.
Donna Brewer, director of personnel for Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said the hospital also had problems hiring and retaining nurses. It has
But even though the Med Center has unique disadvantages, the nursing shortage is not limited to that hospital.
four vacancies.
Because of the shortage, it has had to increase recruiting substantially.
A hospital recruiter made only five recruiting trips in 1986 but was on the road 27 times in 1987. At the present number of member trips will double during 1988.
She said that the hospital had added a weekend pay increase and was in the process of enhancing programs to attract more nurses.
But although most area hospitals suffer from the shortage, Charles Yockey, chief of staff at Watkins Hospital, said the problem had been caused by another nurse. He said the hospital had hired four new nurses in the last six months.