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Law school applications fall sharply
Guidelines for for future land use approved
By Andy Hyland ahyland@ljworld.com
race from town to town. “It’s a traveling circus,” Mansker said. Though Mansker has not yet spoken with the city of Lawrence, he said he was cautiously optimistic about the opportunity. Megan Gilliland, communications manager for the city, said the event would have to go before the City Commission before it could be approved. Mansker said he hoped to make a kayak race from Manhattan to Lawrence a yearly occurrence in late May, tapping into the rivalry between the two cities.
As Kansas University’s School of Law deals with a national slump in the legal job market, admission applications to the school have fallen sharply. And KU students and recent graduates are expanding their job searches. This year, the school received about 850 applications, which is down from about 1,100 the year before, a nearly 23 percent drop. “This trend of double-digit drops in applications, nearly every school in the country is experiencing this,” said Stephen Mazza, dean of KU’s law school. KU’s drop-off is still well above the national average, which was around 12 percent to 13 percent in February, but has probably increased since then, Mazza said. “What has happened is the game has gotten much more competitive for getting applications and retaining students,” he said. KU will be stepping up its ow n ga m e . A f te r t h e l aw school’s director of admissions KANSAS left for a new job at the Univer- UNIVERSITY sity of Connecticut, KU will be adding not just a new director, but also two new positions — an assistant director and a seasonal recruiter — in the admissions office, Mazza said. Sparkle Ellison, who will be a third-year law student this fall, said she’s not as concerned about landing a job after her schooling because she’s looking to enter a specialized field. She said she’s not surprised to see the drop-off in applications this year. “With the job market, it’s easier to keep whatever job you have than go back to law school,” she said. Ellison said she has advanced degrees in science, including a chemistry doctorate, and is considering patent law. She keeps up on the market in her field by talking with professors, reading patentspecific blogs and by word of mouth. Todd Rogers, assistant law dean for career services at KU, said he’s seen more students applying for positions that prefer a law degree, rather than those that require bar passage. KU reported 62 percent of 2009 law graduates whose employment status was known were working in a bar-required position nine months after graduation. That same statistic fell to 59 percent for the class of 2010. Meanwhile, 9.2 percent of that same pool of students were working in J.D. preferred jobs in 2009, rising to 10.7 percent in 2010. Those jobs often pay similar to a mid-size law firm, said Rogers, who wrote a blog post for the law school on the topic. Examples of institutions offering “J.D. preferred” jobs that 2010 KU law graduates accepted include NCAA member institutions, federal agencies and the World Bank. “People are much more open to it now, and I think that’s mostly out of necessity,” Rogers said.
— Reporter Joe Preiner can be reached at 832-6314.
— Higher education reporter Andy Hyland can be reached at 832-6388. Follow him at Twitter.com/LJW_KU.
Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo
CURT RAUSS, LEFT, AND ROGER BROWNING plant corn Tuesday at Jellystone RV Park and Resort, 1473 U.S. Highway 40. The field is adjacent to a small creek. New regulations expected to be drafted as a result of a new environmental chapter of Horizon 2020 approved Tuesday by city commissioners include codes would limit what type of development could occur near streams.
City split on environmental code “The sky is not falling here,” Mayor Aron Cromwell told the crowd. “This isn’t going to be the end of business in Lawrence, Kansas.” But the new chapter sparked multiple concerns from members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lawrence Board of Realtors, the Lawrence-Douglas County Home Builders Association and several area farmers.
By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
The stage is set for new environmental regulations in Lawrence and Douglas County. City commissioners on a 3-2 vote approved the Environmental Chapter of Horizon 2020 despite a deeply divided crowd that filled City Hall on Tuesday.
“This chapter is perilously close to telling us what plants we have to plant,” said Mary Ross, who is part of a farming family in the Kansas River Valley north of Lawrence. “There are some real property rights issues here, and the agriculture community was left out of the planning process of this chapter.” But city commissioners sought to calm fears that the
chapter would create a multitude of new environmental regulations that would be stricter than existing federal and state laws. In fact, they said, the chapter doesn’t create any new regulations but rather lays out the specific areas where new regulations should be drafted in the future. All of those new regulations will Please see CITY, page 2A
Missouri kayak race might be moved to Kaw The race director also hopes to make a kayak race from Manhattan to Lawrence a It’s a fluid situation. That’s how Scott Mansker, yearly occurrence in late race director for the Missouri May, tapping into the rivalry 340 kayak race, describes the between the two cities.
By Joe Preiner
jpreiner@ljworld.com
current standing of this year’s race. High river levels from rain have made the possibility of having the annual event on the Missouri River a no-go. Instead, the race, or at least a version of it, could be held on the Kansas River. Mansker said race organizers are considering three options for keeping currently registered racers happy. The first involves what Mansker said would probably be a 100-mile
race on the Kansas River. The race would begin in Manhattan and either pass through or end in Lawrence. Mansker said the event, tentatively named the Kawrnivore 100, would take place this summer to give entrants who have already taken the time off for the usual Missouri event something to do during that time. The second option, according
to Mansker, would be to postpone the Missouri River race until early to mid-August, when the river is expected be back below flood levels. The third option is to possibly do both events during the next few months. The race has drawn much positive attention from towns along the Missouri River and Mansker said he had already received similar feedback from several towns along the Kaw. Mansker said he planned to drive portions of the proposed course before any official race plans could be confirmed. Traffic has been the biggest hurdle to clear during past events, with about 500 cars following the
Rumblings from earthquake near St. Louis felt in Lawrence By George Diepenbrock gdiepenbrock@ljworld.com
At 3:10 a.m. Tuesday, Rachelle Ziesenis was minding her own business in the middle of her shift as a registered nurse on the fourth floor of Lawrence Memorial Hospital, 325 Maine. Then she felt something odd. “It felt like the building had swayed a little bit. It was just kind of a quick swaying motion,” Ziesenis said. “And my first thought was
an earthquake. Then I thought that’s ridiculous.” But according to the U.S. Geological Survey, Ziesenis likely felt the effects of a 4.2-magnitude earthquake at that time centered about 50 miles southwest of St. Louis. The epicenter is more than 250 miles from Lawrence, and according to the USGS online data for the earthquake, people reported feeling the temblor in Shawnee, Leavenworth, Overland Park, Pittsburg and Wichita. Ziesenis said she only felt the
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Today’s forecast, page 10A
area in Missouri and that the earth’s crust is more stable and not as broken up in the Midwest so waves from small earthquakes can travel farther. “They are able to maintain their amplitude for greater distances,” Black said. “They do not attenuate as quickly.” Law enforcement agencies in Missouri received several calls around the time of the earthquake, but there were no reports of damage or injuries. Ziesenis is familiar with a more
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movement for a few seconds and grabbed onto her desk. It didn’t knock anything off the walls. She called downstairs to security guards on the ground level, who said they didn’t notice anything. A doctor checked his Twitter feed and found immediate reports of the Missouri earthquake. Ross Black, a Kansas University associate professor of geophysics, said that the earthquake was centered in the western edge of a tectonically active zone in the New Madrid
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severe natural disaster event. She was in the former Kmart store at 3106 Iowa on June 19, 1981, when a tornado demolished part of the store and killed one person inside. “I know what a tornado feels like because I live in Kansas,” she said. “I never thought I’d say I know what an earthquake or a tremor feels like because I live in Kansas.” — Reporter George Diepenbrock can be reached at 832-7144. Follow him at Twitter.com/gdiepenbrock. — The Associated Press contributed.
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