University Daily Kansan / Thursday, February 11, 1988
Campus/Area
3
Advisor request fails Pre-law club says system lacking
By Dayana Yochim
Kansan staff writer
Potential law students will have to seek undergraduate advising from officials at the University of Kansas School of Law, despite the efforts of a local club to establish a separate adviser.
The KU Pre-Law Society submitted a request to Del Brinkman, vice chancellor for academic affairs, for the establishment of a pre-law adviser. The request was denied Jan. 26 because of lack of money, Brinkman said.
The society wanted a pre-law adviser because some students who wanted to apply to other law schools felt uncomfortable asking advice from the KU law school. Also, members of the club thought the current advising system was not adequate.
"It's a service we can't provide when we can't even meet basic needs for instruction," Brinkman said. "It's not a case of turning the proposal down, but not being able to come up with the money."
Currently, the law school does not full-time adviser for pre-law students.
Kay Hawes, Mullinville senior and president of the Pre-Law Society, said that she answered questions from at least eight pre-law students each week.
"We don't claim to do a good job of advising, we claim to be what's available." Hawes said of her club's advising.
"I'm only a student. I can't answer all the questions," Hawes said. "It's incredible that all these pre-law students are not aware of requirements and appropriate application procedures. It's not a lack of knowledge, it's just a lack of available information."
Claude Rowland, associate professor of political science and faculty adviser to the Pre-Law Society, said that other universities of comparable
size to KU had full-time advisers for pre-law students.
Kansas State University, Iowa University, Iowa State University, and the universities of Missouri, North Carolina, Illinois and Chicago all have at least one or two pre-law advisers.
"Our students are at a disadvantage to those students in peer institutions." Rowland said.
Rowland said that the law school could only advise a fraction of the undergraduates.
Bill Lilian Six, director of admissions at the law school, said that she would advise any undergraduate interested in going to law school.
"I think we need a completely neutral person to advise." Six said. "I think we are doing the best job we can. We try to be objective because some students are planning not to apply to KU."
Sweet dreams
Kinon Durham, Lawrence junior, curls up with her Walkman and a Do Not Disturb sign. Durham was taking a nap after her Spanish class in Wescoe Hall early yesterday morning.
Bookstores' theft rate lower than at other schools
By Ric Brack
Kansan staff writer
Although the Kansas Union Bookstores expect to lose track of more than $70,000 worth of merchandise this year, the store managers are taking fewer precautions than other college bookstores to curb theft.
Even with fewer security measures, bookstore officials expect only about 1 percent shrinkage this school year. The national average is 1.09 percent.
Shrinkage refers to the unexplainable loss of inventory due to accounting errors, shoplifting and similar problems.
But unlike their counterparts at most midwestern universities, the Kansas Union Bookstore and the Burge Union Bookstore do not require customers to deposit bookbags or backpacks outside the entrance of the store before they enter.
Bookstore officials at Kansas State University, Wichita State University, Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Oklahoma said their stores required customers to leave bags, backpacks and coats outside.
"It's pretty much standard prac
tice throughout the college bookstore industry," said Dennis Berry, director of the Bookcenter at the University of Colorado.
Shrinkage rates at those universities range from 0.3 percent to 1.5 percent, bookstore officials said.
But Mike Reid, manager of the Kansas Union Bookstores, said shoplifting was not a large problem at the bookstores.
Reid said there were always from three to seven employees working in the lower level of the Kansas Union Bookstore, and from 12 to 15 employees who could spot shoplifters worked in the upper level.
He said that those employees monitor customer activity in an effort to stop shoplifting. He said that people who were caught shoplifting were turned over to KU police.
Reid was not sure how many people had been arrested for shoplifting in the nast year.
KU police do not keep specific records on shoplifting at the Union bookstores, said Lt. Jeanne Longaker. KU police spokesman.
Longaker said that no one at the department could recall the last time there was an incident of shoplifting at the bookstores.
cy, saying that he didn't think it was fair to force customers to leave their belongings outside the store if no one was there to watch them.
"I have been called a Nazi for making them leave bags outside during enrollment," Reid said.
Chuck Thadt, manager of professional services at the National Association of College Stores, a professional trade association in Oberlin, said stricter bookstore policies could bring about an increase in thefts.
Reid defended the bookstores' poli-
"One person who was worried about pilferage installed a bunch of mirrors and turnstiles," Thodt said.
"and the pilferage went up."
Reid said he was afraid that if he started treating customers like thieves, they might start acting like thieves.
He said he had proposed a supervised customer service area near the Kansas Union Bookstore. A volunteer from the shop would be included in that area.
Jim Long, the director of the Kansas Union, said that bookstore renovations, including the drop area, could be completed by August.
Long said that security would be easier after the stores were both situated on one floor.
Glassblower's 'jobs' work in labs, research
By Brenda Finnell
Kansan staff writer
Harold Fakhoury peered through the round strain viewer but couldn't find any purple rings on the pear-shaped flask. Another job was successfully completed.
Fakhouy, a glassblower for the chemistry department, uses the viewer to check his work. Rings on the glass indicate the piece has not been heated enough, and that it contains weaknesses that could cause it to break.
Glassblowing is not an easy job, said Fakhoury, who has been at the University of Kansas for 14 years. Fakhoury works in a small room in the basement of Malott Hall.
"It's like fishing," he said.
"Some days you will be with a hook and your fishing rod all day, and you'll end up with the same hook.
"If you can't make it the first time,you try again," he said.
People Fakhoury helps say he is a rapid and efficient worker.
In addition to repairing materials for chemistry labs and creating special lab equipment, Fakhoury develops special glassware for graduate research projects.
"He'll work with you to put together a design that works," said Caroline Scolari, a chemistry postdoctoral student working with George Wilson, professor of chemistry.
"He comes up with excellent suggestions,"Scolari said.
"We reason it out together," Fakhoy said.
Fakhoury said he enjoyed the satisfaction his job provided.
"It cheers a person up to know you have done something good," he said.
Fakhury makes such things as flask joints. He said that if a flask were purchased from a catalog ready-made it would cost $34. But he can add the necessary joint to a wholesale flask and the job costs less than $10.
A typical work day might involve doing four or five separate pieces, or what he calls "jobs." He said he worked both on individual pieces and parts of larger items, such as distillation equipment.
Ruth Jacobson/KANSAN
"While I'm waiting for one job to
be, I'll pick up another," he said.
Harold Fakhoury, a glassblower for the chemistry department,
heats up a glass rod to make a beaker.
"You never know a piece of glass is hot until you touch it," he
Most jobs begin by shaping glass with a flame that is 1,200 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Fakoury wears dark glasses to prevent his eyes from damage the glass glare could cause.
The glass, which Fakhouri said becomes as soft as saltwater taffy when hot, must be constantly rotated so that it is heated evenly.
Fakhoury said he had been burned several times because glass does not change colors when it is heated.
said. "Then you know you have a warm reception."
After the piece is shaped, Fak'houry puts it in an annealing oven, which heats and cools the piece uniformly to prevent cracks from forming.
The oven temperature is 515
degrees Celsius.
"No one ever realizes how long it takes until they watch me do it," he said.
If a job shows purple rings after it has been heated, Fakhoury returns it to the oven.
Greenberg speaks to KU journalists
By Christine Martin
Kansan staff writer
The absence of hometown roots has depersonalized today's journalists, syndicated columnist Paul Greenberg said yesterday.
Greenberg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial, spoke to about 150 people after receiving the William Allen White Foundation Award for Journalistic Merit yesterday at a luncheon in the Kansas Union Ballroom.
White was the editor of the Emporia Gazette from 1895 to 1944. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1923
Greenberg won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for an editorial series about
Greenberg said that journalists today were becoming increasingly impersonal in contrast to White's journalistic style.
"It is not ideas or insights that mark the mod communicator," he said, "but a blend of careful coiffure and a sincerely antiseptic manner that goes by the mismiser 'style' and would better be described as the lack of it."
After the luncheon, Greenberg said that this depersonalization was evident in both newspapers and television.
"Television is more blatant," he said. "They don't have the printed word to hide behind."
Depersonalization makes journalists seem insincere, he said.
"The market calls for Ken and Barbie look-alikes with personalities as blown-dry as their hair," he said.
Greenberg said that recent journalism graduates might have a chance against this wave of depersonalization
"They're fresh, more malleable than some of us who have grown decadent," he said.
In his speech, Greenberg said. "We tend to forget the power and importance of the single human face and the longing for roots, a longing that modernity not only conspires to obscure but assures us is no longer important. William Allen White from Emporia knew better."
Davis Merritt Jr., president of the Foundation, presented the award to Greenberg. He said that the life and works of Greenberg closely paralleled those of White.
"He has a clear, eloquent style and an understanding of the issues of his town, his people, and his society," Merritt said.
Greenberg said that White was a powerful editor because he knew what he wanted.
"His neighbors' ways were his; their distinctiveness and their honor, his own," Greenberg said. "He was part of a community, and he wrote like it, especially when standing up to it."