Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Noland)

These preventative measures ensure that downtown businesses lose as little as possible during the highest shoplifting time of the year.

Shoplifters get away with more than $10 billion in merchandise each year, according to the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. This amounts to about $25 million per day

“We have a person who floats around, straightens and watches people,” said Terri Faunce, owner of The Casbah, 803 Massachusetts St.

The setup of Faunce’s store calls for sharp eyes. The boutique has an upper level and a lower level filled with small, swappable items such as rings, necklaces and bracelets. Faunce puts nickels in place of purchased rings to help keep track of how many are on display at a time.

She schedules at least two employees at all times to monitor both levels of the store. A handmade sign near the stairs prohibits customers from taking jewelry upstairs while they shop.

“It’s hard because of trust,” Faunce said. “I don’t want to make everyone feel like they are a criminal. I do have faith in my customers and respect for them.”

In her store, shoplifting takes away about 5 percent of her profits each year, Faunce said.

“It shows up when we do inventory each year. You definitely feel it,” she said.

Some downtown businesses don’t feel the tug of shoplifting as much as others do. At Arensberg’s Shoes, 825 Massachusetts St., shoplifting is not as common a problem because the store displays only one shoe of each style. Employees must go to the stockroom to retrieve shoes.

The store does maintain a policy that states any returned shoes must be unworn, in the original box and accompanied by a receipt before the store will issue a refund or exchange. This policy helps the business keep track of what comes back to the store and helps ward off fraudulent returns, owner Tim Arensberg said.

“We had a guy walk into the store through the back entrance, go to the stockroom and grab a box of shoes and then try to return them,” Arensberg said. “In a larger store, he may have gotten away with this, but here, you have to have a receipt.”

Security sensors, cameras and mirrors also play a big role in keeping shoplifting low. Sarah Workman, manager of Kieu’s, Inc., 738 Massachusetts St., said that attaching sensors to merchandise was an effective way of keeping track of what goes out of her store.

Though her store hasn’t had a big problem with shoplifting, she said it’s better to have the sensors and the cameras to ease suspicions. She also requires customers to leave large purses and shopping bags outside of the dressing rooms or at the register.

“Some customers find it to be an inconvenience, but most understand why we have to do it,” Workman said.

When stores do have a problem with shoplifting, employees usually know who and what to watch for. Certain mannerisms, such as speech and walking speed around a store, clue workers in on how suspicious they should be of customers.

Abby Blackwell, manager of Britches, 843 Massachusetts St., trains her staff to be energetic, interactive and overly friendly to all customers who come into the store.

“We stay with the customer and interact with everyone. They’re not going to get left alone,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell recalls an incident where a customer behaved strangely in the store. She said the customer took clothes off the hangers before she took them into the dressing room and was grabbing shirts and pants without checking the sizes.

Blackwell helped the person into the dressing room and noted what style of jeans and tops she took in so she could ask the person how each individual item fit. She did this so the person would know that Blackwell knew exactly what was in the dressing room.

“I sat on the steps near the dressing room and watched her legs the whole time,” Blackwell said.

This type of customer service, coupled with security devices, help local businesses keep their losses low and their sales steady.

Jeremy Furce, owner of Britches, said that though his store's shoplifting problem isn’t as high as the national average, measures to keep shoplifting to a low were important to the success of his store.

“We have excellent customer service, and when we throw the sensors in with that, it really helps us keep track of things,” Furce said.

Posted by Kim Wallace at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

University of Kansas childcare centers are exercising the guidelines of a new study about children and playtime.

The American Academy of Pediatrics study says that children benefit both physically and mentally from free playtime.

“Children benefit from the notion that they are using their own structure on the world rather than the world imposing its structure on them,” Michael C. Roberts, professor and director of the clinical child psychology program at the University of Kansas said.

The study defines free playtime as spontaneous time spent outside and inside without set rules or direction. The study includes play that involves “true toys” like building blocks and baby dolls.

Playing without restraints helps children acquire problem-solving skills, adapt to social environments, control their muscles and use their imaginations, the study says.

“Free time is where you get kids truly playing. You can watch a kid pick up a stick and start singing into it, or pretend it’s a fishing rod,” Roberts said. “They are putting their own structure on the environment and get a chance to work out their feelings, difficulties and creativity.”

This study comes as a surprise to those who want to keep their children active.

The study counters the idea that educational toys and extracurricular involvement are the only ways to help children grow mentally.

“We have scheduled kids so much. After school activities leave free time pretty tight. Where is the chance for you to become bored and do something different that someone hasn’t imposed on you to do?” Roberts said.

Hilltop Child Development Center director Pat Pisani said that most parents liked to keep their children busy with activities outside of school.

“Many of the older children take part in soccer, basketball and swimming. Lots of others are enrolled in ballet, gymnastics and tumbling,” Pisani said.

The center, located at 1605 Irving Hill Dr., caters to University families, with students’ children given first priority for enrollment, then staff and faculty children.

The study says a lack of free playtime contributes to increased risks of obesity and depression in children.

Hilltop follows meal requirements established by the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Children have light breakfasts of cereal or bread product with fruit or juice. Lunch includes protein foods, bread, vegetables, fruit and milk.

Pisani has always emphasized the structure of Hilltop’s learning experience as a healthy balance of playtime, creativity and teacher-led instruction.

“The kids use a wide variety of learning materials all day long. We also include field trips and walks,” she said. “Each classroom has areas for art, science, dramatic play, books, music and sensory play.”

Electronic influences like interactive television and computer games interfere with unstructured playtime, the study says.

Though Hilltop children have access to computers and educational software, they also go outside for 45 minutes in the morning and afternoon.

They have playground options such as climbers, playhouses, sandboxes, and monkey bars. The center also has mock store and gas station buildings to encourage role-playing.

“We have the largest and probably the best equipped playgrounds in this area,” Pisani said.

Hilltop rarely uses videos as part of playtime. Pisani said they are only used to go along with lessons. The only exception is when the children watch a G-rated movie for special events like pajama days or end of the semester parties once or twice a year.

“There are some benefits of videos and TV, but it should be done in balance. They should never replace free play, which actively engages children,” Roberts said.

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It was a sweltering day in July, and Jeff Lang, professor of mathematics, was surrounded by 2.5 million other bodies. A heat wave had come over the country, making for uncomfortable sweating and a pessimistic attitude toward the setting. But it didn’t matter. Lang was in Mecca.

Lang, who was Roman Catholic until age 16 and then an atheist for 12 years, converted to Islam in 1982. He made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1991 after taking a year off from teaching at the University of Kansas. He was teaching at a Saudi university and decided to go on pilgrimage, which is required of all Muslims if they can afford it, while he was in the country.

Lang recalls the exhaustion of living in Saudi Arabia for a year, but really focuses on the frustrations of dealing with the mosque as an American convert.

“When you’re a convert,” he said, “you really are sitting in both worlds at the same time. You do feel like you’re caught in a cultural war.

“Living in Saudi Arabia, it’s like living in the mosque 24 hours a day,” he said.

Lang has written three books on his experiences as an American convert. His books concentrate on the American Muslim mosque subculture and the role of women in Middle Eastern cultures. In his books, he is “quite critical” of the mosque society in America.

In his book, “Losing My Religion: A Call For Help,” Lang looks at Muslims across the world, foreign born, North American born and North American converted, and analyzes the cultural influences that have taken over Islam. He finds these cultural barriers to be the reason for absence of young Muslims and converts in American mosques.

Besides writing, Lang has lectured on the topic at colleges and Islamic conventions around the nation.

“When we bring people into our community, don’t expect them to become Middle Easterners or Arabs or Pakistanis or Sri Lankans the next day. Or ever even. Give them time to grow into the religion,” he said at the beginning of one lecture.

“If they have this or that problem, if their behavior is not perfect from our particular perspective, it’s better that they come to hear the message. It’s better that they work out for themselves what it is to be a Muslim in America,” he said about young Muslims.

Lang goes on to say that if the Prophet Muhammad and his companions adopted the approach of American mosques, there would be no Muslims today.

Lang married a Saudi woman, Raiga Qandeel, in 1984. He has three daughters: Jameelah, Sarah and Fattin. Because of the women in his life and the mixing of cultures in his children, Lang has tried to help his children distinguish between Islam and the culturally based interpretations of the religion.

“Much of what they picked up and what they love and admire about their mother’s culture, they see as culture,” Lang said.

At the Islamic Center of Lawrence, 1917 Naismith Dr., men worship downstairs and women worship upstairs. Both Lang and Raiga view this as a cultural problem because the Quran, the Muslim holy book, does not say men and women must worship separately. It is this separation that Lang and his wife criticize as a cultural interpretation of Islam.

“In the mosque in Saudi Arabia, you don’t have to go upstairs—you pray behind the men!” Raiga said. “I don’t have to feel the need to have to do a separate thing. There isn’t all this complication.”

Beverly Mack, professor of African and African-American studies, traces prayer traditions back to the 10th century.

“Women would pray next to the men and they would listen to the sermons together,” she said.

Mack notes some benefits in the separation of prayer in today’s mosques.

“You have more privacy. You have freedom to let your children run around if you’ve got kids with you—you can just be without distraction, and that’s the whole idea,” she said.

Raiga, who has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of San Francisco and is from the city in Saudi Arabia, used to be active in the mosque. She sees gender separation in prayer as a cultural difference that causes more harm than good.

“When I went to the mosque here it was ‘Raiga, go upstairs. Jeffrey, go here,’ and my kids were little. ‘I want to go to daddy,’ so I’d come down the stairs. ‘Jeffrey!’ from outside the door, ‘please take your daughter,’ and then I go back up, and then Jeffrey goes up again because she wants to be with mommy. ‘Raiga!’ come take the kids.

“You have the ones from the conservative villages and they come here and they impose their conservative culture on the mosque,” she said. “And it hurts the religion so much.”

Raiga attributes the mosque community’s “closed-mindedness” to different home environments. Most students and people who attend the center are not from the cities in the Middle East where wealth and education flourish, but instead are from rural areas.

“We have a good Muslim community, but we need a more open-minded Muslim community,” she said.

Raiga left the mosque in 1991 and didn’t go back for 10 years. She saw no changes in the way it was run.

“It’s still where I left it 10 years ago with no improvements,” she says.

Each semester, Lang brings home a list of his students and asks Raiga, “Does this look like an Arab name? Does this look like an Arab name? I never see her in the mosque. I never see him in the mosque.”

“Instead of adopting the kids and bringing them in, we are scattering them and scaring them off!” she said.

This Ramadan, the holy month of fasting that started Sept. 24 and ended Oct. 23, the Langs welcomed the Muslim youth to their home so that the kids could have a more open environment to assemble in.

“This is the community here, and my house is never empty. I love having them around because they make the community for my kids,” Raiga said.

In the campus community, Lang has served on and off in the past few years as the faculty adviser for the KU Muslim Student Association.

When he is not teaching or with his family, he finds time to talk about the spiritual and cultural aspects of religion in a more relaxed setting with his friend of eight years, Bangere Purnaprajna, associate professor of mathematics.

“He’s very deeply spiritual and has a very deep understanding and interpretation of the Quran,” Purnaprajna said.

Purnaprajna, who does not practice a religion, enjoys talking about the spiritual aspects of religions with Lang and agrees with Lang’s views on the American mosque subculture.

“Interpretations of religion are different with Muslims from Egypt compared to Muslims from India. Islam doesn’t say to do these things. It’s always the culture,” he said.

Purnaprajna respects the views of Lang and what he does for the Muslim community. He says “he is an inspiration” to him and it is hard not be attracted to his way of thinking.

“He knows who he is. He knows what he wants. He is a very clear thinking person. That is the great mark of Jeff Lang.”

Lang is currently working on his fourth book and will teach math 105 and 699 next spring.

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Kansas incumbent representative Mark Treaster (D-Pretty Prairie) plans on reintroducing House Bill 2546, more commonly known as the seat belts on school buses bill, during the 2007 legislative session. With this, he will also reintroduce the common debate about school bus safety.

The bill, filed in 2005 for the 2006 legislative session, had a hearing in the House Transportation Committee, but was never voted on. Because no vote happened, the bill died in the process and must be reintroduced during next year’s session if it is to ever reach a clear yes or no from Kansas lawmakers.

The old bill called for all buses to have lap and shoulder restraints, at a cost of about $70 million.

“When I saw that price tag, I knew not even a miracle could save it,” Treaster said.

He said it would be up to the school districts to financially accommodate a state mandate, as no tax increases or district revenue increases would help fund it.

Treaster wrote the first bill in response to the 2004 Haven School District bus accident that killed a junior high girl. He said the girl’s mother petitioned for the seat belt mandate.

Since the Haven School District bus accident, no other school bus fatalities have happened in Kansas.

Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas all show records of one bus-related fatality each.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that from 1995-2005, 119 passenger and school bus driver deaths occurred, compared to 1,109 deaths of occupants of other vehicles.

The plan for the revised bill will require all new school buses to have lap and shoulder restraints, and would phase out older buses in 20 years.

“I would only support the use of seat belts if they also included shoulder restraints. The ones I’ve been on that had any seat belts were only lap restraints, which are more dangerous than having nothing at all,” Kyle Kitson, Hays junior, said.

Kitson refers to studies showing that lap belt users may experience severe head, neck and spinal injuries during frontal crashes when the upper body projects forward into a seat during impact.

But many transportation experts disagree with the idea of lap and shoulder belts on new or old buses.

Rick Gammill, director of special operations for Lawrence Public Schools, cites national studies and personal experiences in his school district as reasons for not supporting state-mandated seat belts on buses.

“I’ve had probably two phone calls in the last three years from parents concerned about bus safety,” Gammill said. “The safest place for a kid to be is on a school bus.”

National studies show that school buses provide protection to passengers with safety features such as compartmentalization, or close-spaced seating with energy-absorbing seat backs, and emergency exits. Gammill echoes the “safest place for a kid to be” phrase emphasized by The Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Board reports that “every year more than 800 school-aged children are killed as occupants in other motor vehicles or as pedestrians or bicyclists during normal school transport hours,” and goes on to state that “most of these deaths could be prevented if children rode in school buses.”

But some still aren’t buying it.

“The ‘safest form of transportation’ is a relative term. If you’re comparing riding a bus to riding a bike in traffic, then sure the bus is safer,” Sonja Combest, Baldwin City junior, said. “However, if you compare riding a bus without seat belts to riding a bus with seatbelts, then riding a bus with seat belts would be safer.”

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Stephen Downing is on time with his style. He wears a custom-designed, diamond-encrusted watch on his left wrist and has a top of the line video cell phone in his right pocket. For Downing, his cell phone meets his needs for high end technology, but his watch keeps him feeling sophisticated and stylish.

MSNBC.com reported that in 2005 Packaged Facts, a consumer marketing agency, found that watch sales in the U.S. dropped 4.9 percent. Despite the steady decline of watch sales over the past five years, retailers are confident that the “accessorizing” aspect of wristwatches will keep customers interested in them, even if not for practical use.

“A fine watch is basically a bracelet that tells you what time it is,” Brad Parsons, President of Mark’s Inc. and manager of Mark’s Jewelers, 817 Massachusetts, said.

Parsons said his business, which carries watches from $150 to $15,000, has not felt the affect of the national decline.

“It has not been a noticeable change for us,” he said.

Parsons recognizes the differences in people who invest in a regular wristwatch and people who invest in fine jewelry watches.

“You can easily buy a watch for $20 that will tell the time, but for some people, a watch is a status symbol and an ornament that also tells time,” Parsons said.

This status trend carries over into the cell phone generation, where style and performance must be of top grade for the electronic-savvy.

Downing, manager of the Sprint retail store in Overland Park, Kan., understands why cell phones have come to replace the standard watch. Appearance, function and style can all come together in a sleek cell phone design, he said.

“With cell phones, you can get whatever color you want to match all your outfits, tell the time, e-mail and plan events. With watches there is just very little you can do,” he said. “A watch can’t remind you of your anniversary the way a PDA can.”

Downing estimates that about 80 percent of cell phone buyers look for features such as mp3 players, planners, e-mail access and built-in cameras when shopping for a new phone. He says the other 20 percent buy just based on function.

“Most 18-35 year old men look for the high-tech qualities while the females are looking for appearance and size of the phone,” he said.

On the University of Kansas campus, cell phones pop out at every blow of the whistle, another time-keeping device unique to the University. The whistle sounds at the end of class times during the school week.

“I usually try to program my cell phone’s time to match the whistle so I know how long I have to get to my classes,” Michelle Archambault, Katy, Texas, junior, said. “I get a more accurate reading from the digital display than I would if I was trying to tell the time on a regular watch face.”

These qualities in cell phones carry over from what people used to look for in watches, except on a more technologically advanced level. Anita Gueary, fine jewelry supervisor at J.C. Penney, 3311 Iowa St., says that most customers look for watches that are lightweight, durable and stylish.

“The newest thing with watches is magnetic closures, but most of the standard features remain the same,” she said.

Watch sales at J.C. Penney fell 54.1 percent in 2006, compared to 2005 sales, but the market for promotional watches, or “fashion” watches, experienced a 233.3 percent gain.

“Now it’s all about the way something looks. Appearance is everything, whether it’s a watch face or a phone face,” she said.

Though overall watch sales were down, fashion watches, with features such as interchangeable bands and color swatches, experienced enormous growth. She relays it all back to the concept of style versus quality.

“For some young customers, it’s just easier to get a ‘disposable’ watch to have fun with and change out to match everything,” she said.

But Downing swears by the combination of fashion and function for both watches and cell phones.

“You can tell a lot about a man by the kind of watch he wears,” Downing said, “and also by the kind of toy he carries in his pocket.”

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