6
Wednesday, February 9, 1977
University Dally Kansan
Committee could deflate campaigning by balloon
Staff Reporter
By MARSHA WOOLERY
Whether a hot air balloon adds a carnival atmosphere to the Student Senate elections will be decided in a hearing by the Senate President. In the Cork Two room of the Student Union.
The committee will hold the hearing because of a resolution submitted yesterday to Kevin Flynn, committee chairman, by Lynne Garrell, Senate candidate, and Don Green, vice-presidential candidate, both of the Spectron coalition.
They submitted the resolution after hearing rumors that some candidates were planning to use balloons and parades in their campaign, devices they thought were illegal according to the Senate Rules and Regulations.
THE SECTION that pertains to the "carnival" atmosphere says, "While political parties have proven themselves valuable vehicles for the accomplishment of these ends, experience has also shown that nonpartisan supervision of election is necessary and expensive, excesses accumulating the electoral process with a carnival air through the introduction of gimmicks which have no proper place in that process."
Green said, "We just felt in general that balloons and parades were of the carnival spirit. We just want to make it specified before anything gets out of hand."
The Avanti Coalition sophomore class candidates had planned to inflate the balloon in question in front of Strong Hall sometime this week.
Greg Schrauck, candidate for sophomore class president, said use of the balloon had not been a concern. The balloons. The candidates had planned to inflate the balloon to attract attention.
"THE BALLOON is merely a gathering point for people to see the issues," he said in a letter to the committee. "As a service to the election, the balloon will help the Election Committee attain the goal of 5,000 voters."
Schinacks said that the University Events Committee had approved the balloon last week and that he thought the committee made the final decision. He said the class candidates had been planning the balloon event for about three weeks.
Flynn told all the Senate candidates last night that the committee for the first time was going to emphasize its regulatory role in the elections. Because the committee had interpreted the Rules and Regulations as giving the committee a greater atmosphere campaigns, be said, the committee would "enforce the regulations to the hit."
CANDIDATES PLANNING an event for the campus that might be considered to have a carnival atmosphere must submit a statement to the committee. Fluyt's campus will accept this during the 24 hours after its submission to decide whether the event is legal under Senate rules.
A candidate disregarding the committee's ruling may be subject to a fine of from $5 to $50 or be removed from his seat if elected. Flynn said.
He said the committee's new stance on prior approval wasn't announced to the candidates until last night's meeting in the Jay Hawk Room of the Union.
RANDY McKERNAN, Avanti presidential candidate, said he thought the committee was overstepping its powers as a "superintendent" in violation of personal rights."
Steve McMurry, rights committee chairman, said, "I'm extremely concerned that a change in rules and regulations was not set through the proper channels."
He and McKernan both said they didn't know how the committee could give itself the power to grant prior approval in addition to the rules made following infractions in the past.
Flynn said he didn't think the committee had overstepped its powers. "I think we have to consider that supervisory power over the elections and that supervising can be prior approval."
Open communication is the key to representative student government, Steve Leben, student body presidential candidate, said yesterday.
Staff Reporter
Reflection goal is communication
By SANDY DECHANT
If elected, Leben said he and his running mate, Ralph Mumayan, Kansas Mo., sophomore, would conduct frequent opinion polls and open forums to open lines of communication between students and the Student Senate.
"If opinion polls are taken on a frequent basis, we will have comprehensive input on what students think," Leben, El Dorado junior, said.
Leben and Munyan are running on the Reflection ticket.
AS CHAIRMAN of the Senate Communications Committee, Leben conducted a Senate poll last fall about Feedback and the proposed move of the KU-MU football game. He and Mumuny also conducted a poll in which they asked students to rank a list of items they wanted to see improved.
Steve Leben
Leben said that as president he would
meet each month with living group
executive boards and would hold open
weekly meetings.
Leben is a member of the KU Long-Range Planning Committee and has been KU-Y treasurer the last two years. He is a former student senator and StudEx member.
MUNYAN IS Siphomore class vice president, a senator, a member of the committee and the SIL Society, and was director of the Jayhawk College Quiz Bowl.
Leben and Munyan are spending about $800 on their campaign. They said issues, not money, would make the difference in the campaign.
According to the Senate Rules and Regulations, candidates cannot spend more than $100 on a ballot.
Leben said the most controversial issue was the fate of the $180,000 Student Senate
LEBEN SAID he wanted to use the $108,000 to improve recreational facilities and devise a new system of teacher and course evaluation. If these weren't approved by the Senate, Leben said, he would reduce the student activity fee.
"Everybody is aware that KU's recreational facilities are among the worst, the most hazardous."
LEBEN SAID that improving recreational facilities would include lighting and resurfacing tennis courts, resounding baseball fields, improving soccer fields and putting backstops on softball and baseball diamonds.
He said some KU administrators had proposed a $2-$4 increase in student activity fees to improve recreational facilities. But, depending on the amount of money spent on teacher and teacher evaluation, Leben said, the increase could be reduced to $1 or eliminated.
He estimated the cost of a teacher and course evaluation si. iliar to Feedback, which the University stopped publishing in 1974, at between $50.00 and $60.00.
In a poll of 1,185 students, academic admissions was listed as the number one area of interest.
He said that in the Senate poll he coor-
Involvement is Avanti approach
High quality representation for and communication with all students. It sounds idealistic, and Randy McKernan and Katie O'Reilly, but they still think it is a worthwhile goal.
Running for student body president on the Avanti tank, Mckennan, a Salina junior, said, "It sounds really idealistic to get everybody involved, and people told us we'd have to change our approach—that it was too hooky."
But he and his running mate, Rhoads, Leawood sophomore, decided instead to focus on areas where communication and interaction could be improved by the Student Senate.
She and McKernan don't want to be campaigners who promise to check back to the students but never follow through on them. They don't call on students to get them involved.
THE TWO WANT to publish a weekly Senate column in the Kansan that would report all committee work and the major Senate actions.
Bv MARSHA WOOLERY
"Sometimes it seems like a long walk to the Union to pick up that application." Rhoebe.
ROHAOS ALSO a stud *SExlA* committee would set up an area in the Kansas Union Deli once a week to be more accessible to students because the Senate office was "too formal."
"The whole idea is that once you initiate something like that you've obligated the Senate to provide results to the student body," Randy said. "The more the Student Senate does, the more the students know about it."
They also would expect senators to set up tables in their schools twice a month where students could meet to ask them questions and make suggestions. Lists of senators and their phone numbers would be published so students would know whom to contact.
Better communication within the Senate also is a concern of the team. As vice president, Rhondas said, she worked with the committee and continue issuing them charges throughout the year.
unlimited," she said, "and I would like to make them push to their potential."
Staff Reporter
"It's difficult for students to see what the Student Senate does and how they can get it done."
The team also said it thought the Senate should more closely monitor the activities of the organizations it funds, because no one asks what they are doing until they ask for
THE POWERS of the committees are
"We ought to know instead of going by what they say." Rhhouds said, "even if it was a simple fact."
Randy McKernan
The team formed the Avanti coalition.
comprising 89 candidates for Senate seats and class offices, all of whom say they are interested in solutions to communication and representation problems.
He and Rhoads said they hoped to direct the Senate to have a more activist role, dealing with external problems once it had worked out internal problems, he said.
MKERNAN SAID, "I feel that the Senate seems to have reached a plateau. It was created in a time of turmoil and progressed a lot further in the first few years. In the last two or three years, it was bringing out the activities it was given before."
Avanti is "an Italian word meaning 'moving forward' in a loose translation." Rhoads said. "We choose it because it represents what we want to do with the Student Senate—a word that was more than a gimmick."
Two academic goals the two said they would pursue were improvement of the Student Employment Center and exposure to opportunities for TAs and AEs within departments.
The job center for students, in the Office of Financial Aid, is inadequate, the team said, because funds were insufficient to cover all of the student merit transactions for available part-time jobs.
AVANTI WANTS to see pay discrepancies, of graduate assistants exposed by the task force on AI and TA teaching for the same reason that they would continue to support the graduate fee waiver, the two candidates said.
"I personally feel that undergraduates are affected because if employees are unhappy they obviously aren't providing the best service they can and that's when the undergraduate as the consumer of education is losing out," McKernan said.
"MAYBE TO someone who doesn't live there it seems insignificant," McKernan said, "but the problem has been there for years."
Avant's platform also proposes using Senate influence to lobby with the city in response to students' needs, such as a stop shop on the street by the GOR-Corpin residence hills.
McKernan said his coalition's proposal on use of the Senate's extra $100,000 from the budget bill to help build schools.
"ALL THE student organizations the district has supported," she added. "Money. Some people on the budget committee have never worked with budgets and need direction as to what organizational structures are needed."
dinated last fall, 40 to 50 per cent of those
women who had said academic advising was
adequate.
They propose transferring the money to the Endowment Association to draw interest, and using the money earned for scholarships.
The money would still be controlled by the Senate and if it wished to use it for a worthwhile project it could withdrawn any time, McKernan said.
Leben and Munyan said they hoped to improve Senate budget hearings. The Senate annually allocates money to about 50 student organizations.
"We've both worked with budgets," Leben said. "As KU-Y treasurer, I formulated the budget, presented it to the Senate and then made sure we stayed within it. Ralph worked with the sophomore class budget and managed to stay within it."
Leben said that his proposed evaluation would include not only students' evaluations of courses and instructors, but also requirements of courses, textbooks needed and summaries of students' comments about the course or instructor.
"I don't think we should volunteer to pay for something until we are assured that the faculty using it will also be paying," he said. The administration is saying the building is up to it and not recreational, so I don't think they should ask us to pay the upkeep on it."
"ONE THING Katie and I are opposed to
starting something that would assess the
ability of the company."
Such a project, he said, was the planned additions to Robinson Gymnasium, for which the Student Senate already pays $35,000 annually.
Leben said that if the course and instructor evaluation wasn't approved by the Senate, more money would be spent on improving recreational facilities.
Steve McMurry, campaign manager, said
Munyan said, "When we organized our campaign we wanted as good a campaign as possible with the least possible money. We'll do the same with the Senate—spend money only when it is absolutely necessary."
The recommendations made by the Academic Affairs Committee are intended to improve the selection, training and accreditation of assistant instructors and teaching assistants.
Muyan said that as an umbudman he *would help students solve their problems* in this way.
LEBEN AND Muyan said they also would stress the improvement of classroom teaching by implementing recom-
mendation in the Senate Academic Affairs Committee.
Leben and Munyuan they would attempt to start a "serious lobbying organization to get University-related information" on the Board of Regents and the legislature."
SENIORS
Although the position of University ombudman has been discussed by the administration, funding for one isn't available.
Come to the HARBOUR on Feb. 10th from 8-11 p.m.
Leben said that although a lobbying group wouldn't affect this legislative session, "a strong lobbying group will be working before we leave office."
Leben and Munyan said that they had been speaking to living groups and would hold open forums at apartment complexes to increase voter turnout for the election. Leben is a journalism major and Munyan is a political science and history major.
would work as a student ambudsman until the University hired one.
for a
PRE-K-STATE FAREWELL TO THE HARBOUR PARTY
that McKernan's and Rhoads' campaign would cost about $600.
MUNYAN SAID that as vice president, he
McKernan, a business major, has been a member of the Senate Finance and Auditing Committee two years and is committee chairman. He also was a member of the University Organization and Maintenance Committee and is a member of Sigma Nu fraternity.
BESIDES THE issues, McKernan said, the "major plank of our platform would be experience. The more experience you can draw on the better decisions you can
(The HARBOUR isn't leaving . . . you are!)
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