Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Noland)

Many students walk past the Max Kade Center for German-American studies everyday, never knowing what’s inside. This house, tucked in behind the University of Kansas radio station KJHK, is the research center for eight ongoing projects.

The Max Kade Center, named after a prominent German businessman, also acts as an office for professors, staff, as well as a home for visiting professors from Germany. The KU German department also hosts conferences, workshops and lectures at the Center. It’s main significance deals with the projects that are being put together there.

One of the ongoing projects is the Alexander von Humboldt Digital Library. The von Humboldt Digital Library encompasses old technologies with new ones. Researchers at the Center are taking von Humboldt’s volumes of works from his travels to the Americas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and are scanning them into a computer and then are putting them online. The hope for this project is to share the 23 volumes of his observations with the public by posting them on the Internet.

Frank Baron, KU German professor and director of the Max Kade Center, understands the importance of the Internet today, and why it plays a crucial role in his research. “Students today can go to the Internet and get material, but it is usually something that has already been discovered and put on the Internet. What’s fascinating is discovery and discovering something that nobody else has seen in that particular combination,” said Baron.

The Max Kade Center houses a collection of von Humboldt’s texts and drawings. Their importance to history and science are quite noteworthy. “We’ve been collecting all of the evidence about Humboldt’s influence on (Charles) Darwin, and it represents that connection between those two figures. It represents the history of the humanities and the sciences in the first half of the 19th century. It is quite important,” Baron said. “I think it’s important in Kansas to understand a little better what evolution is all about.”

While von Humboldt’s research is fascinating, finding a way to put them on the Internet in such a way that a layperson looking at them gets a feel for what von Humboldt was actually researching is the difficult part. This part of the project is left up to Armin Graf, Seattle senior.

Graf is one of a couple assistants that help put together von Humboldt’s works to put them on the Internet. “Since Doctor Baron realized that I was technically proficient, he put me on the von Humboldt Digital Library,” Graf said. “I am happy because I got to learn a lot of technology and learning a lot about Web development in general. I had a little bit of experience, but I actually got to use it.”

Graf has traced von Humboldt’s trip to the Americas using the computer program Google Earth. With the help of other designers, they put links to specific parts of von Humboldt’s texts on the Google Earth map, making it entirely interactive.

Besides the Alexander von Humboldt Digital Library, the Center has also helped put together another large project. By large, one means the entire state of Kansas. The Linguistic Atlas of Kansas German Dialects has taken the German-American relationship and used the state of Kansas as a sampling site.

William Keel, KU German professor and chair of the German department, is in charge of the Linguistic Atlas project. “I started at KU in 1978 and immediately became aware that there were major concentrations of Germans in the state, and that in some of those communities that the immigrant language or dialect from Germany was still alive to some extent,” Keel said.

Keel decided to document and record these dialects in order to display, geographically, the German dialects in Kansas. “It is a map-based collection of digitized dialect recordings that researchers and the general public can access via the Internet,” Keel said.

German dialects are highly prevalent in Kansas, as almost half of the population in Kansas comes from German ancestry. “The German dialects in Kansas are just as much a part of the (cultural) landscape of Kansas as are the Flint Hills or Tall Grass Prairies. Using a map we can easily show the interested researcher or layperson where various dialects of German are spoken,” Keel said. “Whether it is Low German near Bremen, Kan., Volga German in Schoenchen, Bohemian German near Ellis, Swiss German in Bern, Kan., or even Pennsylvania Dutch among the Old Order Amish in Anderson County and Reno County, each dialect has its local community and a map that shows it quite well.”

Keel said that almost every kind of German dialect is found in Kansas. As he put it, finding dialects in Kansas was like “hitting the mother lode in a gold mine.” The Linguistic Atlas is still in progress, but the subjects of the project are becoming harder to find as German dialects are slowly going unused and forgotten. Some communities are embracing their heritage. Baron said a community in Kansas is taking German classes to learn a certain dialect that has ties within that area.

/>Max Kade
Photo: Courtesy: Max Kade Center Online

The Max Kade Center got its start in 1965 after contributions from Max Kade himself. Kade was born in Germany in 1882 and eventually found himself in New York with a patent on a common cough remedy, Pertussin. With this patent came fame and fortune, and he used that fame and fortune to help out education in the United States and Germany by donating money for scholarships and other educational necessities.

Max Kade and the Max Kade Foundation have nearly single-handedly funded the Center at the KU, and both professors and students use what he has given to the University.

“I do dialect research and am involved in the (Linguistic Atlas Project) through my dissertation,” said Jörg Meindl, KU graduate student. “It is a very nice place with a great book collection. There are many books you cannot find in other libraries at KU that you can find here. It's a nice gathering place for presentations and receptions.”

The Center houses nearly three floors of books and materials. Books in this Center are found in not only in German, but also in nearly 20 other languages. These books are all vital in the research that takes place in the Center. “Working here gives people an opportunity to develop the resources to make them available for research for studies and for classes,” Baron said.

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Wal-Mart’s back in the news, and it’s not because it’s opening another store in Lawrence. Wal-Mart has made national headlines recently because of its new initiative to lower the cost of many prescription drugs to just $4 per prescription. Undoubtedly, this new initiative has had great success, but has gained much criticism as well.

Local pharmacists have been quick to say that Wal-Mart's new initiative is not helping the customer. Some say it is a large media stunt to help boost their own sales.

“Wal-Mart has great marketing. This plan was rolled out and it seemed really great to the people that may not have been in the industry,” said Jeff Sigler, pharmacist and owner of Sigler Pharmacy, 4525 W.6 St. He referred to the media strategists for Wal-Mart that are unaware of how the actual pharmacy market is being run.

Sigler’s student intern, Marc Wilson, said that the new Wal-Mart initiative really doesn’t save the customer any significant amount of money. “As far as bringing true savings to consumers, you’re talking cents,” Wilson said.

Sigler did show regret in some of the decisions that he made in light of the Wal-Mart’s Plan. “The only thing that I am disappointed in is that I wish I would have come up with that idea in the first place because we’ve already been (lowering generic drug costs) for the past year,” Sigler said.

He said that Wal-Mart’s new campaign is so effective because of the mass audiences that it reaches. Starting in September, Wal-Mart’s new program was introduced in the state of Florida, where it quickly gained popularity and started its expansion. A little more than a month later on Oct. 20, a Wal-Mart news release showed plans to unveil this program in 14 more states, including Kansas. Six days later it was in full effect in Kansas.

“We started rolling (prescriptions) on Oct. 26 in Kansas,” said Kory Lundberg, media spokesperson for Wal-Mart. “It’s been very well received by our customers. In the four days after we extended the program on Oct. 19 into 14 states, we have sold more than 152,000 new prescriptions in those 14 states.”

Lundberg gave reasoning to Wal-Mart’s new pricing plan. “A lot of the patients seem to be happy with the effort that Wal-Mart has put forth to take some of the cost out of the health care system,” Lundberg said.

Wal-Mart has expanded the list of generic drugs on the plan from 291 to 314 since its start. With such large growth in a short amount of time, smaller pharmacies should be feeling the effects of Wal-Mart’s generic drug program, as is apparent by some of the complaints that Wal-Mart’s media office has fielded.

“We certainly receive a lot of calls (about competition), we can’t speculate on how competitors are doing. Many competitors have responded by matching our prices, and that is certainly welcome because it helps in bringing affordable prescriptions to customers,” Lundberg said.

Some online news sources have said that Wal-Mart’s new plan is completely unfair, and that it is driving the smaller competition to close. “They are closing down lots of pharmacies and lots of stores all over the United States because of their unfair practices,” one Wisconsin pharmacy spokesperson told a local TV affiliate. This is hardly the case.

Since the new plan has been unveiled here in Kansas, Tom Wilcox, pharmacist and owner of Round Corner Drug Store, 801 Massachusetts St., hasn’t seen a single change in his business since the lowered drug prices. “I haven’t had one concern about it, or talk about it with my customers,” Wilcox said.

He explained that what Wal-Mart is doing is not that outstanding because its low prescription costs only account for a miniscule amount for the actual drugs that are on the market. “This whole Wal-Mart thing is only like 1 percent of all the drugs on the market place, it is not a large percentage,” Wilcox said. “It’s popular because people see the low dollar amount and think ‘Well, you know, I’m only going to be paying $4 for a prescription so I might as well go there,’ but then they go over there and (the price) is just for one type of drug and not another.”

Price difference between pharmacies' generic drug prescriptions is not that substantial. “We have not seen it affect us at all. Our generic prices are pretty darn competitive anyway,” Sigler said.

He brought up another valuable point that many of the generic drugs that Wal-Mart has priced at $4 were almost that cheap before. “As I went down that list and looked at the differences of what our normal price was and what their $4 price was, in many cases it was maybe a dollar, or a dollar and half difference. This really isn’t a big issue for any of our customers,” Sigler said.

Wilcox said that smaller pharmacies are still in business for a reason. “If we weren’t competitive, we wouldn’t be here,” Wilcox said. He has owned the Round Corner Drug Store for almost 20 years now.

The aspect that keeps smaller pharmacies competitive is their closeness with the customer. “We’re here for a reason. The reason we are here is because we take care of our customers. We have home delivery, and we do direct account. We’re making ourselves available to our customers,” Wilcox said. This is something that Wal-Mart cannot provide, and other local pharmacies have seen this inadequacy within larger, chain pharmacies.

“(Our customers) would rather go with a company that has a pharmacist that can maybe spend a few minutes with them, and they don’t have to wait in line, they don’t have to walk a long way to get the counter,” Sigler said.

Smaller pharmacies tend to have better customer-pharmacist relationships, drawing a very strong clientele. “I feel like I know most of my customers by their first name, and I know a lot of what my customers are taking,” Sigler said. “With a small, independent pharmacy, I think you have more of a partner in your health care. You’re not just a supplier. We are concerned about their health care and the effectiveness of their medication.”

Sigler Pharmacy hasn’t seen a single fluctuation in the amount of business that it does except for the couple of customers changed to their pharmacy from another competitor.

“I haven’t lost any customers, actually I have gained two customers from Wal-Mart this week alone,” Sigler said. “They might not have been happy with how long the lines are at Wal-Mart now.”

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Walking into the Shirk’s home would give any Jayhawk enthusiast a deep feeling of belonging. Stories that come from the memorabilia fill the air, and many of the memories come from one man. Sitting in the living room of their home are pieces of history that would make any University of Kansas basketball fan, or just a basketball fan, become giddy.

“To Dave Shirk – A noted athlete, a splendid gentleman, and a true friend. James Naismith, Lawrence, Kansas.” This handwritten note on a portrait of Naismith, the inventor of basketball, was a gift from the father of basketball himself. Next to it stands another note to David from Forrest “Phog” Allen, a former KU athletic director, basketball coach and KU legend.

David Shirk and his wife Margaret are always opening their door and letting visitors in. Their barn is used frequently as a party destination, and their house accompanies guests from their family to past KU basketball players’ families. Now David does not seem to be getting the same respect from the University.

In 1934, David was recruited to play football by then coach Ad Lindsey and athletic director Phog Allen. David played football for KU from 1934 to 1938. He was a defensive end, and was the captain of the team in 1938. David’s knowledge of KU athletics is truly unsurpassed.

“I’ve known every athletic director that’s ever been at KU,” David said. He knew most of these athletic directors on a personal level.

“If you knew Doc Allen, he could have been a preacher, he could have been a judge,” David said. “Ol’ Doc Allen was just someone that you couldn’t help but like.” “He could’ve been a great politician,” Margaret added emphatically. David remembered how he would hang out with the basketball team, and they always treated him like he was a basketball player, not a football player.

With this legacy came a great status, as did for any athlete that lettered in athletics before World War II.
“Anybody before World War II that lettered was supposed to get a lifetime pass to anything that the athletic event at KU,” said Margaret Shirk, David’s wife. David called this his “K-Card,” which he still has today.

“My K-Card was signed by Doc Allen, it was part of his handout whenever he recruited, and it let you into any athletic event,” David said. This was part of the allure of going to KU for David.

“(Ad Lindsey) had his eye on me, and said he wanted me to go to KU. I was going to go to K-State because most people from El Dorado went there,” David said.

When David played football, there were no scholarships, and while he was at military school at Fort Leavenworth, he met Phog Allen. Since there were no scholarships to hand out, unlike today, there was one advantage for playing on a team at KU. Allen could get the athletes paying jobs in the summer that helped them pay their way through college.

His stories go even further in richness of tradition. David told of how after Dr. Naismith retired, he was still conducting experiments at the University. “(Naismith) was in the second floor of the old Robison Gym, and he had one experiment where he was trying to figure out how to make people taller,” David said. He actually took part in some of Naismith’s experiments.

“I was his guinea pig from the football field. He had to take athletes from different sports, and he was trying to see if he could expand my chest. He even took his own daughter and tried stretching her out on the dining room table,” David said.

David lived like any other college student, experiencing what college is really about.

“The Pi (Beta) Phi house was the first panty-raid house that we went to,” David said, with a large grin on his face. He wasn’t much of a dancer either.

“Listen, he took a class in dance at KU, a football player had to!” Margaret said. David took the class because he knew, and still admits today, that he can’t dance.

“Since I was the only guy in the class, my teacher told me that if I could do the ‘Shuffle-off-to-Buffalo’ dance she would give me my half credit,” David said

Margaret was always at his games, although she wasn’t dating him at the time. “He wasn’t my football hero that I went with, but I saw him get carried off the field once, I was with another fellow, and I felt so bad for him,” Margaret said. David reminded her that this was the only time he had been taken off the field.

The couple’s recent memories of KU are not as bright.

Unlike today, David had to check in with the Chancellor every week to make sure he was doing well in school when he attended KU and played football. This could seem like a good idea for today’s athletes here at KU. Since KU football and basketball have been put on probation just recently, David and Margaret think that the student is being taken out of student-athlete.

“I think that they recruit (athletes) telling them that if they play good they can go to the NBA or pro, and I think that is bad because we need people to do other things,” Margaret said. “They’ve recruited players that only care about going pro, many of whom don’t care about their education. I think that if the player takes a scholarship and leaves early they should have to pay back that scholarship so somebody else can have a scholarship.” She went on to mention the recent situation surrounding KU basketball player C.J. Giles.

“He had everything going for him, both of his parents graduated from KU, and they were both ball players here, I don’t know what his problem is,” Margaret said.

David and his wife have taken a firm stance on how KU treats its alumni. They have been season ticket holders for both football and basketball for 40 years, but they say that have been disrespected.

“Look how much money KU is going to make this year just on basketball,” David said. His wife continued on. “If I had $10 million, I wouldn’t give the athletic department a penny, and (David) played, and we were going to, but not anymore. I mean (the athletics department) didn’t even try to be nice to be people. Not even to the Allen’s. They were just nasty to anybody unless you are willing to give a million dollars,” Margaret said. The Shirk’s tickets used to be a couple rows up from the basketball court, but now because they are unwilling to pay the amount that the athletics department wants for those seats, they have been forced to give them up.

Asked if KU will win a National Championship this year in men’s basketball, David said, “Well if they don’t, we need a new coach,” followed by his wife saying, “Oh, David, don’t go quite that far!”

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As universities become larger, the demand for student housing becomes just as great. Neighborhoods, landlords, and renting tenets, namely students, have all seen little or no affect of zoning regulations.

The City of Lawrence recently won a case in District Court that dismissed the plaintiff’s case that city inspection of rental homes was unconstitutional. Housing inspections have not been of priority in the City of Lawrence, though, and landlords and their tenets still do not know about the zoning codes.

“Most students do not even pay attention to that quite honestly,” said Brian Jiminez, City of Lawrence code enforcement manager. “Each owner, there’s a responsibility on their part to obviously know the rules and zoning rules so they don’t violate it.” Many times with landlords this is not the case.

In a scenario similar to Lawrence’s zoning ordinances, Iowa City, Iowa, and home of the University of Iowa, has had many problems with its rental housing zoning codes where only a certain number, usually three unrelated people can live together.

“Landlords are partly to blame,” Karen Howard, associate planning director for Iowa City. She said that a lot of times when rental properties change ownership, the new owners fail to realize what their rental permits state as the allowed number of unrelated occupants. Many landlords also choose to neglect the zoning ordinances because city officials rarely enforce them.

“It’s usually a complaint driven type of inspection,” Jiminez said. “We don’t do inspections to see if properties are occupied properly.” He went on to explain that there are no scheduled inspections, but there are structural inspections. Neighborhoods play the major role in these types of zoning code infractions.

“I know people that get cited for noise complaints, but I haven’t ever heard of people getting in trouble for having too many people living in a house,” said Nate Stafford, Overland Park senior. Noise complaints are the leading causes for inspections, and are the problems for tenets and landlords alike.

“We’ve dealt with (over occupying) many times in the past,” said Jiminez. “We’ll go into a house for a structural inspection and see that there are eight people living there.” Many of these people who are caught over-occupying a property are unaware that there are consequences of doing so.

“We do have complaints that come through our office, typically they come from single family districts,” Jiminez said. “Too many people living in a place will typically draw the attention of the neighbors who do know the ordinance, and that’s typically where the problem starts.” In some cases, these zoning infractions can be dealt with by compliance by the property owner and tenets, but municipal court penalties can be implemented.

“Ultimately, we want people to comply so they don’t have to go to court. The landlord can say that he didn’t know or whatever, but we don’t want to see them go to court. It is ultimately up to the municipal court judge to impose any kind of fine or penalty,” Jiminez said.

A task force in Iowa City has been put together to help students that are looking for off-campus housing to understand these rules and regulations that are overlooked by many here in Lawrence.

“I think something could be done by the city to help people fully understand the rules and regulations because I don’t know anything about it, and I’m pretty sure not many students do (know the zoning codes),” Stafford said. Zoning codes are important, especially in a college town like Lawrence. Noise and refuse problems are the target of this zoning code.

“People who own their own homes and have families who live in these congested areas of students are just trying to live a nice family life, but it becomes difficult when eight college kids are living in a five bedroom house next door,” said Brooke Anderton, Gage Management employee. Gage Management deals strictly with rental properties in Lawrence, and his been faced with this problem.

“I have received complaints from neighbors who say, ‘You got those college kids down there partying every night,’ and (the neighbors) don’t let that slide,” Anderton said. “If I find out that there is an illegal roommate living at a property, I will serve that tenet notice.” Serving a notice helps protect the tenet and the rental agency from further penalties. “Zoning infractions can cause problems with the tenet’s deposit return,” Anderton said. Other landlords often fail to recognize these laws and put themselves and their tenets in jeopardy.

“Some companies and landlords are negligent, but we take that stuff very seriously because it is a liability,” Anderton said. Both students and landlords can face penalties without even knowing it.

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“After having a stroke, I could not keep my motorcycle standing up, and that’s how I came to find scooters,” West said.

West drives one of his multiple scooters almost every day April through October, when the weather is conducive to scooters. During those months, West said that it was the perfect form of transportation for driving around town and completing errands. Considering West’s main concern for having a scooter was his stroke, he has also found that using a scooter was a lot cheaper than driving his car.

“In a year, I expect to only pay $64 in maintaining my scooter. This includes gas and maintenance,” West said. A lot of the appeal of scooters is just that. Since gas prices have reached usage levels, and oil has been such a large issue, scooters ability to go a long ways on a single tank is very pleasing. Scooters average between 85 and 115 miles per gallon. More people are beginning to buy scooters as an alternate way of transportation.

“From what I have seen, when gas prices are higher, more scooters are sold,” West said. West is a usual at Sub Sonic Scooters and has seen these trends of sales.

Sub Sonic Scooters, 624 N. Second St., has been the local scooter provider in Lawrence for almost four years. West keeps some of his other scooters at the store, where his friend and owner of the store, Mike Degraw, looks after them.

Degraw has been a scooter enthusiast for many years, but about four years ago he decided he would bring the usage to Lawrence. He talked about how he wanted to bring a global industry to Lawrence.

“I went to Asia many years ago, and it was there that I began to really like scooters,” Degraw said. “Scooters are absolutely huge in Asia and European countries.” He also saw how scooters had become abundant on the coasts of the United States.

Naz Ferishta said she used to ride scooters in her home country of India. Ferishta is the manager of Jayhawk Food Mart, 701 W. Ninth St., and says that she wouldn’t ride one here because of safety concerns.

“I would not drive one in Lawrence because people are a lot more aggressive when driving here,” Ferishta said. Many people do choose to ride scooters, but who is driving them may be surprising.

Degraw explained that there are many different types of people that come into his store looking to buy a scooter.

“When coming into this business, we thought that students would be almost 100 percent of our sales,” Degraw said. “It ended up that only 25 percent of sales comes from students.” He said that his sales range from anyone from a student to a 70-year-old.

“I sell a lot of scooters to those people of the Baby Boomer generation. A lot of them have arthritis but still want to be out on the road on two wheels,” Degraw said. Scooters can be a lot less intimidating than motorcycles, and are much easier to handle due to their weight.

Karl Gustke, Overland Park junior, rides his scooter to class and to run errands.

“I like having my scooter because it doesn’t cost anything really to keep it. I really bought it because it was fun to drive,” Gustke said. Gustke owns a dirt bike and a car, but prefers to go about Lawrence on his scooter.

“I ride my scooter whenever there is nice weather, even if it is in the middle of December,” Gustke said.

In the state of Kansas, any scooter with a motor that is less than 50 cubic centimeters can be driven without insurance and without any type of motorcycle license. These kinds of scooters, often called mopeds, come with 49cc motors and are popular among students.

“Most students buy the 49cc models because they are less expensive and they come in models that offer a retro look,” Degraw said. Many students and non-students have come into his store to buy 49cc scooters because they have had their licenses suspended because of a driving infraction. They also do not need insurance to drive one.

There are much larger scooters on the market that require insurance and a motorcycle driver’s permit. Scooters can come in any variety of 125, 150, 200, 250 and even a 600cc touring model scooter. Where a 49cc scooter weighs around 200 pounds, a 600cc scooter can weigh nearly 600 pounds.

The scooters that Degraw has for sale all come from overseas, but he does not directly deal with the manufacturer to import them.

“All of my scooters come into the country by way of a private importer. This private importer is where I access all of the models that I need,” Degraw said. Degraw said that he could order a specialty scooter for a customer and have it in Lawrence in five to seven days. “When the scooter arrives at my store, it is 95 percent assembled,” Degraw said.

Sub Sonic Scooter’s models come from companies including Kymco, TNG, Tomos, Daelim and United. All of these brands of scooters are manufactured in either Asia or Europe. Kymco is the best selling scooter in the United States, and is why Degraw chose to sell them.

“They are all good distributors. There is not much competition over the Internet to sell them,” Degraw said. Scooters from the manufacturer cannot be sold over the Internet because they must be sold out of a store.

Selling scooters during the winter months can be a difficult task.

“It’s tough (selling scooters) in the winter. It all ends up being a numbers game,” Degraw said. During the winter, Sub Sonic Scooters usually sells three or four a month. Summer brings an abundance of business. Degraw said that they normally sell two or three scooters a day. The scooter market has boomed in Lawrence since Degraw has been in business.

When Degraw first started selling scooters out of his downtown office space three and a half years ago, business “started off slow,” as Degraw said. He sold between 60 and 70 scooters his first year. Since that first year he has nearly doubled that by selling 150 and more a year.

Ferishta said that she probably sees 8 to 10 scooters outside of her store a day, most of which are driven by students. She often hears about them from people that don’t have one.

“I hear people talk about buying a scooter all of the time because they want a way to save money and not have to pay such high gas prices,” Ferishta said.

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