Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan / Monday, March 18, 1991
3
Area runners take to the trail for the Second Annual Shamrock Shuffle along the levee just north of the Kansas River Bridge. Ted Oritz bested a field of 176 runners in the 5-kilometer run to take
And they're off
first place in the overall male division with a time of 16 minutes, 14 seconds. Carol McFall claimed the overall female division, finishing at 19:20.
Muslim students want holy month to help all Arabs
Kansan staff writer
By Lara Gold
As Muslims around the world participate in the holy month of Ramadan, some KU Muslim students hope this period of atonement and forgiveness will ease tensions in the splintered Arab world.
"Ramadan will increase the chances for peace," said Hamed Ghazali, president of the Muslim Student Association.
Ramadan, which began yesterday, is a month-long period of daytime fasting and extra prayers. Mohammed, the Muslim prophet, is to the Koran his revelations to the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, during this time.
"We pray for God to help us and to help humanity." Ghazali said.
He said the daytime fasting was not the challenge of Ramadan.
"We cannot utter any bad word against anyone else or mistreat anybody else." Ghazali said.
The extra kindness will help Muslims, who are split over the gulf war, understand each other. he said. Muslims who normally do not per-
ticipate in daily prayers do during Ramadan, he said.
The Lawrence Islamic Center, 1300 Ohio St., which usually serves about 20 Muslim students, is expecting 40 to 50 more for prayer during Ramadan. There are about 150 Muslim students at KU, Ghazali said.
Muslims have a three-day celebration at the end of Ramadan, he said.
"It is almost equivalent to Christmas," Ghazali said. "There are parties and picnics; people give presents."
Riad Badhdadi, Damascus, Syria, graduate student, said the purpose of fasting during Ramadan was to establish equality in Muslim society where everybody is doing and feeling the same thing.
"Spiritually, you have to make yourself feel really good. You have to deal with people. You have to be generous," he said. "I hope this month will take off some hard feelings from the war.
Unique collection gives KU rare look at Irish culture
"Hopefully, it will put all parties in a state where they are more gentle and forgiving to establish peace."
University could become national center for Irish studies
Bv Beniamin W. Allen
Although many students chose to study Irish culture by quaffing green beer on St. Patrick's Day, KU may soon be one of the best places to study Irish culture on a more serious academic level.
Kansan staff writer
The Spencer Research Library is now cataloguing a unique collection of Irish literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The O'Hegarty collection, which was purchased by the University of Kansas in 1939, is the personal mug of P.O. Hegarty, the first Irish postmaster.
"This has the potential to make KU a national center for Irish studies," said Richard Clement, assistant special collection librarian and director of the library.
Clement said the reason the collection never had been cataloged was because cataloguing was an complex and time-consuming task.
"It's relatively easy to get money to buy books, but it costs a lot of money to catalogue them," he said.
O'Hieargy, who was postmaster from 1922 to 1945, collected materials ranging from works of W.B. Years, an Irish playwright and poet, to
political pamphlets distributed on the streets of Dublin.
Clement said the wide range and unique nature of the materials in the collection made it one of the best collections in the nation.
Harold Orel, professor of English who teaches a humanities course on Irish culture, said the O'Hegarty collection was a primary asset to the University's special collections and the University as a whole.
"The collection has a great many rare items," he said. "O'Hegarty was a kind of book pack rat. To put it in context, he was an avid book collector."
Orel urged the students of his humanities class to use the collection for their research papers.
He said many of the items in the collection were of an ephemeral nature, such as leaflets from the trees. The trees are extremely difficult to find anywhere else.
O'Hegarty was involved in the volatile politics of his age by being a secret member of the Irish Republic, an organization of a magazine for the organization
He was fired from his position in the British postal service after he refused to sign a loyalty oath to Charles II, and men after the 1961 Easter rebellion.
the collection of books as a retirement fund that he could sell off later in life.
Clement said O'Hegartv looked on
KU was the only interested buyer of O'Hegarty's library after his death. Clement said.
"I'm the Irish national library wasn't willing to buy them but thought that they should be given the collection by me," she said. "To this day they are not too happy."
Clement said the collection remained largely unavailable for 30 years until the Department of Education started to finance the cataloging process.
The grant provided $178,000 in 1990 and $152,000 this year, and Clement said negotiations with the department probably would yield an equal amount next year.
The cataloguing process involves entering information about the books into the Online Computer Library System. The system allows worldwide can search for materials.
Once one library enters information about a book into the online system, it makes cataloging the book much easier for other libraries members because they can simply access the information from the system.
He said the reason the federal government was financing the project was because 60 percent of the buildings had never been catalogued before.
Operational changes cut costs Watkins trims staff, cross-trains to avoid health fee increase
By Amy Francis Kansan staff writer
Although Watkins Memorial Health Center has not asked for an increase in the $69.50 student health fee in its budget for the next fiscal year, it has had to make changes to compensate.
The budget for next year is expected to increase from $4.4 million to $4.7 million. But that amount may change if a salary increase for civil-service employees is passed by the council or the director of Watkins. Most of Watkins' staff would be affected.
"They will pass one, but I don't know how much," he said.
At a meeting to review the budget, which was
made available to the march, participants responded pos-
sibly to the budget.
"I'm for what they're doing. It seems to be rather effective and efficient," said Carl Damen, Student Senate treasurer, who reviewed the budget. "The budget is sound."
Keith Nitcher, University director of business affairs, said, "I think the business operation has been very good."
Some of the changes that Watkins has made with its business operations has involved its staff.
Strobl said, "The main thing we've done is reduce the number of staff."
one reason for the push to reduce the size of Watkins' staff is that salary and salary-related costs this year amounted to $3.3 million, 75 percent of Watkins' budget, he said.
In the past 10 years Watkins has reduced its staff by 17 percent, Strobl said. It did not renew two physicians' records.
"I'd love to have 10 more doctors, but if we can't afford it, we cannot afford it," he said.
The staff has been reduced about as much as possible. Strobi said. Sometimes Watkins has been left short of staff when many of its staff members have been ill or taken to the hospital, so for the smaller staff and eliminate any unneeded positions.
It is used in areas such as the X-ray department that have a low student demand for their services. Although only one person may be needed to operate a department, restrictions on how many hours a person can work created the need for more than one person being able to attend class. Strobil said. Cross training is used throughout Watkins.
Students are charged for certain lab tests and for X-rays. There is also a greater cost for medication from the pharmacy because of the rising cost of medication. Strobil said Watkins would not increase its $3 filling fee on medications.
Watkins also has tried to cut costs by asking staff members to consider a nine-month employment option, he said. An employee would work during the nine months classes are in session but not during the summer. No salary would be paid during the summer, but benefits such as insurance would be maintained.
Although there is no planned student fee increase,
there have been some increased costs to students in
the school.
Residence halls closed for break cause problems for some students
By Jonathan Plummer
Kansan staff writer
Sima Wahla, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, sophomore, said she was lucky to find a place to stay this spring break.
Wahla said that she had signed up to stay in the residence halls during spring break but that the office of student housing announced that a hall would not be open.
Waha lah it it was the second year she had signed up to stay in a residence hall and found that a hall was not
Student housing policy this semester was that 48 students must sign up for housing before a hall would be opened. Students must attend stairs.
"The impression is always that the dorm will be open." Wahla said. "But this is my third semester here, and I knew that it probably would not be open. I applied, but I also made other plans."
On the day before spring break, Wahla said she called her friend Bishakha Bhattacharya, India sophomore who lives at Jayhawker Towers, to ask if she will stay with her. The towers stay open during all breaks.
But Wahla's contingency plan also fell through when the friend she was going to go home with found her parents had changed their plans and would not be able to take in Wahla.
"I called Bishakha and she said OK." Wahla said.
"Otherwise, I would have been in bick trouble."
Bhattacharya said that Wahla's problem was not an isolated one and that she had moved from a residence hall to the towers because of problems she had finding a place to stay during breaks.
"There is a need to keep a dorm open," she said. Gwurder Kapur, Singapore senior, said finding housing during breaks was a problem many international students faced.
He said that he had lived in the towers since he came to the University of Kansas but that he knew at least a few people who were there.
"It is one of the factors that students do not take into account, but it's a major problem; it's a bit of a problem."
David Friend, Great Britain graduate student, said that he had not experienced difficulty in finding a place to spend the break but that he could understand how other students could have problems.
"I managed to have a place to stay in Lawrence," he said. "I mostly just asked around, and luckily I found some English students who were not staying in their apartment.
"You've got to ask around in order to sort of survive. I suppose it would be more difficult to those who have trouble with the language or no friends."
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