4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
》 HOUSING
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2006
Ryan McGeeney/KANSAN
Jarred Kolar, Libertyville, Ill., junior, repairs a hole caused in his apartment's kitchen wall during the previous week. Kolar estimated he had repaired it to 10 doorknob-, spoon-, and fist-sized holes in the same apartment during the course of the semester. "Sometimes it's an accident," said Kolar. "Sometimes it's somebody just being an idiot and punching the wall."
Season's mess awaits students
Apartment residents near Memorial Stadium repair holes, clean carpets
With the football season officially at an end, many KU students who live near Memorial Stadium have encountered spring cleaning early after this semester's tailgating.
BY MATT ELDER
The Stadium View Apartment complex, 1040 Mississippi St., was often students' second choice for tailgating after Campanile hill during game days.
The complex's parking lot was often overflowing with students because of its proximity to Memorial Stadium, but it was the complex's residents who were left to clean up the mess of hundreds of layhawks tans.
Jatred Kolar, Libertyville, IL,
junior, lives on the second floor
at Stadium View. With no home
games remaining, Kolar will have to invest both his time and money to return his apartment to the way it was when he initially moved in, despite taking several precautions.
"It came to the point where we were putting down plastic lining on the carpets and leaving it there," Kolar said. "We bought 200 yards of the stuff and covered every inch of our living room and still had to have it steam-cleaned."
Kolar and his three roommates recently began patching holes in their apartment's walls from the fists and chairs of disgruntled KU fans. Kolar has had to pay to patch the holes and for local hardware stores to match the paint on the walls. But they continued to host parties because people expected them too, Matt Green, St. Louis junior, said.
"There were a lot of people you
don't see every day but that you expect to see every weekend there's a game," Green said.
Green's apartment is on the complex's first floor, adiacent to the parking lot. While both Green and Kolar tried to limit their guests to close friends and acquaintances, strangers still managed to work their ways inside the apartments.
"Since we were on the first floor we got most of the traffic," Green said. "Strangers would check scores and use our bathroom just because we were closest, just adding to the mess we had outside."
Anthony Defilippo, St. Louis senior, has a house at 1024 Mississippi St. with three roommates.
Defilippo had Saturday morning class this semester and often returned to a crowded and dirty house on gamedays. On one
Saturday morning. Defilippo returned home to find his garage door spray painted with a large smiley face. Like much of the mess from past tailgates, the face is still there.
"We're not always good about getting things cleaned up," Defilippo said. "But hopefully the spray paint is going to come off okay."
Stadium View's management will send people to inspect the apartments for damages sometime this week, Green said. He, like Kolar, had to invest in the repair of his apartment's walls and carpets so he wouldn't be charged large fees by the complex's management.
Kansan staff writer Matt Elder can be contacted at melder@kansan. com.
Edited by Derek Korte
HEALTH
Outbreak of E. coli from scallions shuts down Taco Bells
BY BETH DEFALCO ASSOCIATED PRESS
SOUTH PLAINFIELD, N.J. — Taco Bell ordered scallions removed from its 5,800 U.S. restaurants Wednesday after tests suggested they may be responsible for the E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least three dozen people in three states.
The fast-food chain said preliminary testing by an independent lab found three samples of green onions appeared to have a dangerous strain of the bacterium.
"Iin an abundance of caution, we've decided to pull all green onions from our restaurants until we know conclusively whether they are the cause of the E. coli outbreak," said Greg
Creed, president of Irvine, Calif.
based Taco Bell.
The company would not immediately identify the supplier of the scallions, so it was unclear whether contaminated green onions reached other restaurants or supermarkets.
Tainted green onions from Mexico were blamed for a 2003 outbreak of hepatitis A in western Pennsylvania
that was also traced to a Mexican restaurant. Four people died and more than 600 people were sickened after eating the green onions at a Chi-Chi's.
California is the nation's largest supplier of green onions. But by December, as winter sets in, the vegetable is often imported from Mexico.
Yard Trimmings Collection
At least 46 confirmed cases of E. coli sickness linked to Taco Bell have been reported in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
All 15 Taco Bell restaurants in Philadelphia voluntarily closed Wednesday.
Edited by Travis Robinett
Welald was emphatic when describing the issue calling it an "extraordinary monumental crisis."
The fix on Medicare payments is estimated to cost more than $10 billion over a one-year period. The abandoned mine bill could cost $5 billion over 10 years.
Kansan staff writer Jack Weinstein can be contacted at jweinstein@kansan.com.
Among the tax breaks, a research and development deduction extension through 2006 and 2007 would cost $16.5 billion. Extending tuition deductions through the end of 2007 would cost $3.3 billion. Another provision allowing tax payers in states without income taxes to deduct state and local sales taxes would cost $5.5 billion.
"A woman who's frantic about possibly being pregnant is not in the right state of mind to look up the health risks of Plan B on her own," she said.
It remained uncertain whether the House and Senate could come together on a package that would not be so laden with expensive programs that it becomes unpassable.
Galle said, "We need to get the down payment and at the same time develop a plan as to how we'll move the rest of the way."
Habasy said she was concerned about Plan B's over the counter availability. She said she didn't understand how Plan B could be available over the counter when the FDA hadn't approved regular birth control pills over the counter.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Plan B for over-the-counter sale in August.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, R Calif., said they were working to keep Medicare payments within budgetary limits.
The package would also open up 8 million acres off the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, postpone a planned cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians and extend an abandoned coal mine' reclamation program.
As of late Wednesday, negotiators from the two chambers were still struggling to come up with a common approach to a tax and trade package that could bring the 109th session to a close. House Majority Leader John Boehner informed lawmakers that they wouldn't be able to adjourn on Thursday as earlier planned.
He and Hemenway discussed
With talks on a compromise plan making little headway, Senate Finance Committee leaders introduced their own 500-page bill that would renew expired or expiring tax breaks for businesses and middle income individuals and trade items affecting economic relations with Vietnam, Haiti, Africa and Andean nations.
The tax portion, said committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R
The House, meanwhile, gave conservatives perhaps their last chance for a while to vote on an abortion bill. It was defeated.
The six university presidents will meet with Governor Sebelius before Christmas to ask her to urge the legislature to make a 25 percent down payment on the deferred maintenance when she meets with it in January.
"We're talking to you because we need your support." Hemenway said. "Many of you see the governor more than we do. The governor has to know that this is an issue from people other than us."
the historic value of the state university campuses and how that history needed to be preserved, not only for the intrinsic value, but so the universities could continue to provide the level of education students expected.
Planned Parenthood will self Plan B over the counter for $25 starting today.
MAINTENANCE (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
WASHINGTON — In the final hours of Republican rule, the Senate on Wednesday put forward an all-purpose bill covering everything from normalized trade with Vietnam and tax breaks for millions of taxpayers to an expansion of offshore oil drilling.
Cathy Thrasher, Watkins Memorial Health Center chief
Hemenway indicated the problem was the result of lack of state funding for the past 10 to 12 years. And during a decade of neglect, not only have the number of repairs risen, but inflation has caused the cost to rise. Hemenway said the good thing about this issue is everyone understood it. He described a farmer needing to repair a building and a homeowner's leaky ceiling to illustrate that general maintenance was a part of life.
Kansan staff writer Anna Faltermeier can be contacted at afaltermeier@kansan.com.
Edited by Travis Robinett
BY JIM ABRAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thrasher said Watkins had carried the medication over the counter for about three weeks. It costs $24.09 with tax at Watkins.
Republicans push for bills in last hours
PLAN B (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
POLITICS
lowa, gives "continued tax relief to families paying college, teachers buying classroom supplies and producers of clean energy from sources such as wind."
pharmacist, said Plan B needed new packaging specific to over the counter sale before it could be sold that way.