University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, December 2, 1987
Campus/Area
3
Local Briefs
Fall graduates to be honored at reception
KU students graduating this fall will be honored at a commencement reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Adams Alumni Center
Invitations were mailed the middle of last month to students who have applied for fall degrees.
Chancellor Gene A. Budig, school deans and other administrators will offer personal congratulations to graduates. Members of the KU Student Alumni Association will assist as hosts.
Students who attend the fall reception also will be able to participate in May commencement activities if they would like, including the traditional march down Mount Oread and ceremonial degree conferral.
Students expecting to receive May commencement information should verify their addresses with the department of educational services.
Learned addition to be named in May
The addition to Learned Hall, which currently houses the engineering library, will be named after Charles Spahr, a KU alumnus and former chairman and chief executive officer of Standard Oil Co.
Spahr, a 1934 KU graduate, helped raise most of the money for the addition, which was completed in 1984, said Kathy Porsch, public relations assistant with the School of Engineering. Spahr also has helped raise money for other school projects, she said.
The Board of Regents approved the naming at their meeting Nov. 20. The ceremony will take place when the School of Engineering Advisory Board meets May 5 and 6.
Porsch said the addition had been designed for conversion to classrooms, offices and laboratories after construction on the new science library is completed.
Fall band concert will be tomorrow
The University of Kansas Band,
conducted by James Barnes, assistant director of bands, will present its fall concert at 8 p.m. tomorrow in Crafton-Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall.
The band will perform music by J. Clifton Williams, Hugh M. Stuart, G.F. Handel, Edwin F. Goldman and Otto Nicolai. The concert is free.
Student Senate to meet tonight
Student Senate will meet at 7 tonight in the Kansas Room at the Kansas Union.
Senate is scheduled to discuss:
■ A bill to finance the extension of Robinson Center's hours next semester.
A bill to finance the Senate Task Force on AIDS' plan to distribute condoms to KU students next semester.
A bill financing the Kansas Undergraduate Review, which publishes the findings of undergraduate research at KU.
Honk honk
From staff and wire reports
of geese was flying south over West Lawrence yesterday afternoon. In recent years, number of geese has grown in Kansas has because of the addition of man-made reservoirs, said Marion Mengel, adjunct curator of the Museum of Natural History. Blue and snow geese will be seen flying over Lawrence on their way to use the reservoirs.
Study-by-mail grades to be in GPA
By JENNIFER ROWLAND
Staff writer
The College Assembly in a close vote yesterday passed a measure that will allow correspondence study grades to be figured into a student's overall grade point average.
Previously, courses completed through the University of Kansas independent study program were counted as credit, but no grades were recorded for the course.
According to figures provided by the division of continuing education, 2,200 students were enrolled in correspondence courses last year.
James Carothers, associate dean of liberal arts, said during the meeting that during the outback last year when courses had to be cut, students who needed courses to graduate were encouraged to enroll in correspondence courses.
Yesterday's decision will mean that students who previously had no incentive to do well in their correspondence courses now have one.
practice it. "It simply means that students who have a superior performance in the correspondence courses will have that performance acknowledged." he said.
J. P. Davidson, chairman of the physics and astronomy department, opposed the measure.
One reason for his opposition was
that KU faculty and departments don't have control over the grades assigned for correspondence courses.
"The standards are not equivalent to the College standards. These courses are not equivalent by a long shot." Davidson said.
Davidson said the amount of time a student was allowed to complete a correspondence course puts students who took the course in a semester at a disadvantage.
"It puts these people on equal footing and I don't think they should be." he said.
eugible to graduate with distinction if they have completed at least 60 credit hours at KU with at least a 3.5 grade point average, and rank in the top 10 percent of their graduating class.
Students ranked in the top third of those eligible for distinction status will be awarded graduation with highest distinction.
highest distinction. Departments won't be consulted on the awarding of these honors, according to the measure.
The Assembly also passed a measure making students automatically
A measure to adopt a plus-minus grading system for the College was tabled until next semester.
Commission hears zoning concerns
By VALOREE ARMSTRONG Staff writer
Concern over high-density, mostly student housing in the Oread neighborhood spurred more than an hour of discussion about the neighborhood's current zoning at the Lawrence City Commission last night.
Commissioners voted 4-1 to initiate steps to limit the number of people that can live within certain zones of an area 85 square blocks north and east of the University of Kansas. The action set a Jan. 27 date for a public hearing on the rezoning before the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission.
Mission:
Members of the Oread Neighborhood Association said that current zoning encouraged property owners to allow their houses to deteriorate because they could then sell them to developers interested in building multi-family housing.
r Red Sack, president of the association, said the high-density development drove out other businesses, while the whole character of the neighborhood.
Oliver Finey, a former president of the Lawrence Preservation Alliance, said that unless something was done, even all it had
old houses in Oread would be replaced by high-density housing.
Harlane Papanek, 100 Tennessee St. , said substandard housing was common in Oread and was partly the result of the zoning.
Such willful neglect would be deterred if property owners weren't financially enticed by developers, Papanek said.
Association members instead would like to see those old houses restored.
But Bill Gadberry, 2159 Brener Dr., who owns property on the west side of Mississippi Street in Oread, said some of the houses the association was trying to save weren't likely to be redeveloped
The city will send letters to property owners of record before the public hearing, explaining the action that would change the zoning that now allows the development of apartment buildings. The new zoning would limit development mostly to duplexes.
They're too small, he said, and were more suitable for student housing than restoration.
property owners who wish not to have their lots included can write to the city asking to be exempted from the action.
Chances for longer hours at library slim, official says
Watson Library's hours probably will not be extended during finals this semester. Mary Hawkins, assistant dean of libraries, said yesterday.
The University Senate Libraries Committee will meet Dec. 8, one day before finals begin, to discuss the possible extension of the library's hours. This would not give the dean of libraries much time to respond to a recommendation to extend the hours.
We'll just have to consider it a lost cause for this semester, unfortunately.'
— Mary Hawkins assistant dean of libraries
But Hawkins said, "I feel that it's important that we do wait to hear what this advisory body has to say, because it is one of their agenda items this year."
"We'll just have to consider it a lost cause for this semester, unfortunately." Hawkins said.
tends to
Jane Hutchinson, libraries committee member, said the committee would discuss the issue of extended library hours in general and not solely with regard to this semester.
Three weeks ago, Hawkins and a Student Senate library task force discussed the possibility of extending library hours with the help of Senate financing. About $800 would pay for the extra staff needed if they remained open until 2 a.m. each day. November 30. Hawkins told the task force.
Even if the committee were to recommend extended library hours for this semester, Hawkins said an insufficient number of student assistants had indicated interest in working the late hours.
But Mark Flannagan, the task force's chairman, said he decided not to introduce a bill to finance the extra hours.
"The reason I decided not to sponsor the bill is because, in my mind, it's something that should not come out of Student Senate funding," Flannagan said. "What I heard at the time was that we had good chances of getting money from somewhere else in the University."
Flannagan said that Student Senate could have financed the extended hours as an experiment to find out how many students would use them. But if such a trial run had proved successful, he would have wanted the University to finance extended hours in the future.
Hawkins said that if the libraries were to finance the extra hours, money would have to come from an area other than the budget for student assistant salaries.
Hawkins said Watson's hours might have been extended had the issue been brought up earlier in the semester.
Fighting frostbite Warm Hearts hopes for help
By MICHAEL MERSCHEL Staff writer
Some Douglas County residents will face a difficult choice this winter: stay warm or eat.
People who are unable to pay their heating bills will sometimes stop buying food before they let their heat get shut off, said William Smith, chairman of the KU division of the Douglas County Warm Hearts campaign.
"They've got to put the money in beat or put it in food," he said.
The Warm Hearts campaign has started a fund drive to raise money for people who face such predicaments. The need for contributions is especially important because the group cannot count on a mild winter this year.
Art Wolf, chairman of the Douglas County Warm Hearts campaign, said that the group was helped last year to buy a pair of boots from a mild winter the year before.
Even with that help, some people had to be denied aid, he said.
The long-range forecast from the National Weather Service in Topeka is for a normal winter, said Richard McNulty, deputy meteorologist. That means cold temperatures than the last two years.
Smith said that Warm Hearts was the only group in the area that took responsibility for paying heating bills. Warm Hearts helped nearly 1,000 people last year, he said, at cost of about $6,400 — just in heating bills. The City of Lawrence pays the group's administrative costs.
Wolf said that those aided came through social service organizations such as the Salvation Army, which verified the applicants' need for assistance.
After someone is approved for aid, Warm Hearn sends money directly to the utility company to insure that the money goes directly to the heat-
People have been generous to Warm Hearts in the past, and the campaign has received assistance from the City of Lawrence, local businesses and student groups, but Wolf is still concerned about meeting this year's $65,000 goal.
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