/ NEWS / MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2011 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Local food bank in crisis
Just Food must raise $100,000 in less than two months
BY PATRICK MUELLER
pmueller@kansan.com
Financial strain might paralyze an organization that serves food to thousands of local families. Just Food, a Douglas County emergency food provider, needs to raise $100,000 by April 21 in order to maintain operations.
order to maintain our operation.
"If we do not meet this fundraising goal by mid-April, we'll be forced to make some difficult decisions," said Carolyn Ward, director of planning for Just Food. "That might include preparing to shut the operation down, curtailing our services significantly, or people may not be served at all."
people have
Just Food served 2,200 families
last month and has trouble
breaking even because of the recent economic recession
"Unfortunately the nature of nonprofits, the greater the need, the more our expenses go up, and donations go down. So it's kind of a perfect storm," Ward said.
a perfect storm. Wear a
About half of Just Food clients
are under the age of 18 or above
the age of 60. According to Ward,
the organization can provide
food to these people for about 74
cents per meal.
"If people can look at maybe skipping four or five lattes a month, or skipping a nice meal out, once a month, and instead donating that money to Just Foods, we can leverage that money to provide food for twenty two hundred people," Ward said.
If you would like to donate visit justfoodfund.org.
— Edited by Sean Tokarz
For more coverage of this story, check out KUJH's newcast today at 4 p.m.
NATIONAL
Colorado marijuana users may face limits for DUI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
DENVER — The surge of medical marijuana use in Colorado has started another debate in the state Legislature: What constitutes driving while high?
Lawmakers are considering setting a DUI blood-content threshold for marjuana that would make Colorado one of three states with such a provision in statute — and one of the most liberal, according to Rep. Claire Levy, one of the bill's sponsors.
sponsors.
Under the proposal, drivers who test positive for 5 nanograms or more of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, would be considered too impaired to drive if the substance is present in their
blood at the time they're pulled over or within two hours.
over or within the overseeing Levy, a Democrat from Boulder, said she's gotten resistance from medical marijuana advocates who fear it will restrict patients from using the drug.
"What I've tried to assure the patient advocates is that we're not talking about sobriety checkpoints, we're not talking about dragnets and massive stops," she said. "They're not going to be stopped if they're driving appropriately."
erance policy for driving with any presence of an illegal substance, said Anne Teigen,policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.Minnesota has the same policy but exempts marijuana.
While it's already illegal to drive while impaired by drugs, states have taken different approaches to the issue. Twelve states, including Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Rhode Island, have a zero-tol-
Nevada, which is among the 16 states that allow medical marijuana, and Ohio and have a 2 nanogram THC limit for driving. Pennsylvania has a 5-nanogram limit, but that's a state Health Department guideline, which can be introduced in driving violation cases, Teigen said.
cases, register them Pot activists say they hope marijuana DUIs are not based solely on the amount of the drug that is found in someone's system, but rather on the totality of the case.
AUSTIN, Texas Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.
Texas bill would allow guns on campus
More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea.
Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and
NATIONAL
Town Sheriff Will Masters, portrayed by Rick Martino, has a friendly chat with Elma Duckworth, played by Erin Mae Johnson, in Saturday night's performance of William Inge's, "Bus Stop," at Montana Reporter Theatre inside the Lied Center. "Bus Stop" takes place in a small Kansas town outside Kansas City, which is stricken with icy conditions that force the passengers of an interstate bus to stop for the night.
Diner discussions
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several have allowed handguns.
Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.
"People tell me that if they would have been there, they would have shot that guy. That offends me," Goddard said. "People want to be the hero, I understand that. They play video games and they think they understand the reality. It's nothing like that."
dents who can listen.
“It’s strictly a matter of self-defense,” said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. “I don’t ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks.”
Until the Virginia Tech incident, the worst college shooting in U.S. history occurred at the University of Texas, when sniper Charles Whitman went to the top of the administration tower in 1966 and killed 16 people and wounded dozens. Last September, a University of Texas student fired several shots from an assault rifle before killing himself.
Opponents of campus gun rights say students and faculty would live in fear of their classmates and colleagues, not knowing who might pull a gun over a poor grade, a broken romance or a drunken fraternity argument.
Goddard was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times in his French class. Student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, including 10 in Goddard's classroom, before shooting himself. Goddard dismisses the idea that another student with a gun could have stopped the killer.
environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors," Oklahoma Chancellor of Higher Education Glen Johnson said in January.
himself. Similar firearms measures have been proposed in about a dozen other states, but all face strong opposition, especially from college leaders. In Oklahoma, all 25 public college and university presidents declared their opposition to a concealed carry proposal.
Johnson said in January.
Guns on campus bills have been rejected in 23 states since 2007, but gun control activists acknowledge it will be difficult to stop the Texas bill from passing this year. "Things do look bleak," said Colin Goddard, assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, who was in Austin recently to lobby against the Texas bills.
"There is no scenario where allowing concealed weapons on college campuses will do anything other than create a more dangerous