STUDENT NEWSPAPER
11Enforcing corporate policy"
Vol. 55, No. 21 Louisville, Kentucky Thursday, Feb. 16, 1984 10 rages
University plans place for study
in the still hours of the night
By LARRY D. CROOM
News Editor
As of now, there is no place on any
of the University of Louisville
campuses that remains open past
2 a.m . for students to use as a
study hall.
But this problem may soon
change. Currently, a proposal is
being investigated concerning the
opening of a new facility for late
night studying. As of now, the
project is only in its infancy, and
no exact cost details are available
for public inspection.
According to Harold Adams,
assistant vice president for stu­dent
life, the most likely choice is
the lounge located in the front of
the Ekstrom Library. Adams said
that the lounge will have to have
bathrooms added to accomadate
the student traffic that may use
the facility late at night.
The student lounge located in the front of the Ekstrom Library may become a 24-hour study lounge.
"I think ihe library is the most
likely place," said Adams. "The li­brary
atmosphere is important."
There are two other options
Lab ·safety needs to be 'continually addressed'
By ANGELA KORTZ
Staff Writer
Cal Tech student, Ramsey Bit­tar
"will never recover," said one
of the attending physicians at
Hunington Memorial Hospital, lo­cated
in Passadina California.
This week, Bittar' s father took his
son to a Wisconsin hospital.
The younger Bittar was gravely
injured on Jan. 4 when a glass.
flask he was using in a basic inor­ganic
synthesis procedure
exploded and severed his main
neck anery.'Bittar, still in a coma
to date, suffered brain damage
when his brain was deprived of
oxygen.
Bittar's research adviser, Dr.
John Bercaw, refused comment
on the accident. "[ have been ad­vised
by the University not to
comment on the incident."
Allen Van Alsett, the other
graduate student that was work­ing
on the experiment with Bittar,
suffered superficial injuries from
the same bursting flask. "But I
was the lucky one," he said.
When asked about the accident,
Van Alsett was very apprehen­sive,
asking "Whose side are you
on." Yet, he insisted that he and
Bittar-.foUowed a literature prep
that had been published in the
American Journal of Chemistry
Society. According to Van Alsett,
the reaction involving an exother­mic
(heat giving) chemical, was
not reacting normally, "so we
heated it ten degrees more, and
Reagan's. budget knife
By KAY MORGAN
Contnbutor
Part of the material for this story was
gathered from the College Press Ser­vice
.
The Reagan administration re­vealed
its new higher education
budget proposals on February 1.
The new budget would drastically
alter some programs. According
to the College Press Service, the
budget calls for a "down pay­ment"
for Pell Grants, "needs
tests" for everyone applying for
the Guaranteed Student Loan,
and basically cutting out what
Congress added last year. It is a
rehash of the 1981 proposal.
Although the administration
has asked Congress to appropri-ate
$6.5 billion for student aid,
Reagan's proposal will change the
rules for distributing the money.
These changes could result in a
loss of more than a million grants
and loans during the 1984-85
academic year.
The changes in tbe Pell Grants
would eliminate 300,000 of the
grants, causing more students to
go into debt with student loans,
according to Kathy Ozer, lobbyist
for the U.S. Student Association
(USSA).
The changes would also cut out
913,000 grants and fellowships
awarded in 1984-85 under other
programs, claims Charles Saun­deu,
legislative director of the
American Council on Educatio.n.
The proposed budget was an·
that is when it (the reaction) took
off and exploded."
Neither Van Alsett or Bittar,
however, used safety shields. Ac­cording
to Van Alsett, the experi­ment
was done under a hood, a
compartment designed to protect
the researcher from toxic fumes
or potential explosions. "(We)
didn't have the shields up."
The hood that Bittar and Van
Alsett were using was an older
model. Van Alsett said that the
more recently designed hoods
have arm holes which allow the
researcher to manipulate and ex­periment
without opening the
hood or reaching in and disrupt­ing
the atmosphere. According to
Van Alsett, the hood he and Bittar
were using didn't have these
cuts deep,
nounced by Education Secretary
Terrel Bell in a small Depanment
of Education auditorium. Bell told
reponers that the administration
is proposing a major philosophical
shift in federal student aid with a
return to a traditional emphasis
on parents' and students' respon­sibility
for financing college costs.
Parents and students are being
asked to pay a greater share of
their college costs. Bell wants
them to make a "down payment"
of up to $500 to their colleges in
order to qualify for Pell Grants.
In an interview, Blake Tanner,
director of Financial Aid at the
University of Louisville, said he
had received no information con­cerning
the proposed 'down pay­ment'
plan for Pell Grants. He said
luxuries.
Dr. Douglas Walters, a chemist
with the Nonh Carolina National
Institute of Environmental Health
disagrees with Van Alsett. "Abso­lutely
any chemical is potentially
hazardous," he said, "Too many
people do not realize that. Water
can be hazardous, and sodium
chloride can be hazardous. Stu­dents
and professors should not
take for granted that chemicals
are safe."
Concerning the topic of · lab
safety, Walters said the instructor
is the one responsible.
"The individual is supposed to
exercise good instincts as well as
knowledge to assure that good
procedure is carried out in his
see 'Precaution,' page 10
cuts grants
that phraseology is misleading.
According to Tanner, the $500 re­ferred
to by Bell as a down pay­ment
is actually the self-help ex­pected
from a student's summer
earnings. It is the student's con­tribution
toward his education.
Tanner said there is a floor ·of
required self-help which has to"
come from other sources besides
the Pell Grant, before Pall Grants
can be paid.
Tanner saw a need for alarm
concerning Bell's usage of the
term 'down payment'. "It's a mis­leading
phrase. It doesn't mean at
all what it says. It would defeat
the concept of a needs-based pro­gram."
Why Bell refers to the
see 'New: page 10
Dr. Knowlton Johnson's job: 'A very nice fit'
By JEFF LEE PUCKETT
Staff Writer
Dr. Knowlton Johnson,thenew
director of U of L's Urban Studies
Center, has brought some depres­sing
news with him from An­chorage,
Alaska, where he has
lived and worked the last three
years.
"The weather here (in Louis­ville)
is actually worse than in
Alaska," he said.
Anchorage, explained Johnson,
is protected by both a mountain
range and the warm Japanese
current. But before you re-route
your spring break plans from
south to north, read about and
meet one ofU of L's newest mem­bers
Johnson is a bearded, soft-spo­ken
gentleman who obviously
loves his work. He joined the
Louisville community barely a
month ago, when he moved his
family from Anchorage. He has
previously lived in Maryland,
where he was a faculty member at
the University of Maryland,
Washington, D.C., and he is ana­tive
of South Carolina. He re­ceived
his Ph. D. in social sciences
from Michigan State University.
That Ph.D. is only part of a var­ied
career which qualified him for
the new director's seat, a job
which required a year-long can­vassing
and screening process.
Johnson gained much practical
experience in urban research dur­ing
his three years in Alaska. In
Washington, he spent two years
doing "contract research," a pro­cess
whereby a comp'lllly or indi­vidual
retains a researcher for pri­vate
use. His stint at the Univer­sity
of Maryland provided a valu­able
academic background.
"My work history combines
both management as well as
academics, so this (the director's
job) seems to be a very nice fit,"
he said.
The Urban Studies Center is a
research dominated organization.
But just because it is a part of U of
L, a decidedly urban school. does
not mean all the center's attention
is focused on U of L, or on the sur­rounding
city.
"Our primary mission is
Dr. Knowlton Johnson, the
new director ofU ofL's Urban
Studies Center .
Staff Photo !>Y Daniel McClure
urban," said Johnson, "but at the
same time there is a responsibility
to the region."
Part of that responsibility in­cludes
housing the State Data
Control Center. The voluminous
amount of data contained here is
used by the Urban Studies Center
when they are contracted by tbe
state to generate population esti­mates
or provide census data.
"'This data is extremely im­portant
to state policy research,"
said Johnson, "and we want to ex­pand
this service so that this data
would be available to interested
(U of L) faculty and students."
Getting the university more in­volved
with Urban Studies Is also
a concern of Johnson's.
"We will be talking to local policy
makers, trying to find out what.
their research needs are," he said,
"then conduct a faculty survey to
find out what research skills are
available."
When it was noted that tbe
Urban Studies Center, which is lo­cated
on the Gardencowt Campus
in Seneca Park, baa always
seemed separated from U of L by
more than just distance, Johnson
agreed.
"I will be making a concerted
effort to make more contact with
U f1f L faculty and students," he
said. "We even hope to be moving
on to the Belknap Campus before
long."
being considered at the present
time, and both involve renovating
the Ekstrom library in some way.
The first proposal would invole
moving the Bingham Poetry
Room, loacted on the first floor of
the library. That room, would in
turn, possibly become the new
study lounge.
Also being considered is the
possibility of moving the current
unused circulation desk in the
lobby of the library, and convert­ing
that area and some afthe sur­rounding
area into a study facility.
To date, the most popular sugges­tion
is simply .adding the re­strooms
to the current lounge,
and going with that as the new
24-hour facility.
Adams added that he thought it
was only fair to offer some type of
late night place for students to use
as a study hall on campus. But, he
said he wondered how many stu­dents
would utilize the lounge in
the early morning hours.
"What we have now . is not
good," said Adams. "We have to
do something. But if we did a sur­vey,
1 wonder ifit would show that
a (facility) would be used after 4
a .m .
Frank Jemley, Student Govern­ment
president, echoed Adams
thoughts, but stressed the impor­tance
of speed in the opening o.f
the facility.
"I anticipate it (the proposal)
will be completed by the end of
this semester, and the (study haJI)
done by next semester," he said.
Jemley also said that he was in
favor of putting the study hall in
the current Ekstrom lounge, but
added that if the proposal turned
out to be impossible to follGw, the
law library would have to again
open 24 hours a day.
"It doesn't make sense as a
matter of fairness to exclude any
student from any university facili­ty,"
Jemley said. Concerning the
law school library, "all security
problems can easily be fLXed" to
see 'Study,' page 10
A & S student Chris Miller naps in the sunshine Mon­day
afternoon outside the Life Sciences Building.
February weather drops
a summer bomb on us
By JOYCE SHULTZ
Staff Writer
People who were lucky enough
to own convertibles put the tops
down, others dreamed of upcom­ing
trips to Daytona as the unusu­ally
warm. 70-degree days in Feb­ruary
disrupted studying on
Belknap campus.
"If the weather stays nice, I
might take my little boy to the
zoo," said Lana Stokes, an assis­tant
curator of the slide collection
in the fine arts depanment.
Paul Gwara, a Courier-Journal
employee who was standing in
front of the Student Center han­ding
out the Around Downtown,
said, "People take more papers in
warm weather."
The weather prompted John
Kremer, senior in Speed School,
to feed the squirrels:' I can't stand
winter," he said.
"It's nice to study outside, but
it's kind of a distraction because
it's so warm," said Jim Hatcher, a
junior in A & S who was studying
geography outside of Davidson
Tuesday.
"I took the day off from work,"
said Julie Himes, a speech
therapist in the Jefferson Co.
Sc:hools. She said that she called
in sick because she didn't feel
good earlier in the day. "''m glad I
did.;' she said.
"I just try to be sure I spend as
much time outside as I can," said
Kathy Roe, a post baccalaureate
student ln education. "It's a good
time to rejuvenate yourself."
"I think It's great," said Jean
Kurtzweil, a junior in pre-med.
The warm weather was a temp-tation
difficult to resist for many, ·
but resist some did.
''I'm headed to the library to
chain myself to a desk," said
James Young, a senior in Sp~ed
who had a pile of books under his
arm.
"Once the spring weather hits
it's hard to study but you have to,"
said Billy Johnson, a graduate stu­dent
in Speed.
Doug Kemper, director of spe­cial
projects for the Student Gov­ernment
Association and a junior
in A & S said most of the people
in SGA were busy indoors dis­tributing
money from the SGA
Book Exchange. "It (the weather)
has helped me get more work
done," he said. "When I know it's
nice outside it makes me feel
good."
Kemper added that some guys
on his floor in Unitas were going
out for walks. "One of the guys Is
from New York and he couldn't
believe the weather could be so
warm in February," he said.
"''d like for every day to be like
this but I guess it won't happen in
Louisville," said Rachel Husk, a
senior in A & S who was in the In­ternational
Center Tuesday after­noon
doing her work-study job.
"I'd rather be in the park playing
soccer."
Stacy Hagan, a junior in A & S
who works at the Red Bam, said
there weren't many people loung­ing
around on the newly land­scaped
area around the Red Barn.
"I think it's because we're located '
so close to the parking lot," she
said. "People stay closer to tbe
center of campus unless they're
leaving.