Multimedia Reporting (Noland-Volek)

Lawrence Freenet Bring Competition

Sachiko Miyakawa

Shannon Sullivan, an Ottawa junior, used to spend $60 per month for the Internet service at her apartment. Sullivan and her new roommate pay only $25 each month after they switched Internet provider to Lawrence Freenet. The service guarantees unlimited use, so they never worry about an overage fee. Sullivan chose to subscribe to the service because Lawrence Freenet gives Internet access to her laptop outside her apartment.

“It’s cheaper,” Sullivan said. “Also I have a laptop. I like the ability to be able to move with it, that provides wireless service.”

Freenet has been changing the Internet market in Lawrence since launching the official Internet service in May. The number of the Freenet customers reached more than 1,000 this month. Freenet has brought a competition among Internet providers in Lawrence and introducing new kinds of services to the community.

Mobility of the service differentiates the product of Freenet from other companies, including Sunflower Broadband and AT&T. The city-wide wireless network allows customers to get online at most places in Lawrence.

Rachel Burton, a Topeka freshman, started subscribing the service last month. She said she takes advantage of the Freenet network in places on campus, where the University network is not available.

Joshua Montgomery founded the non-profit organization, Lawrence Freenet in April 2005. He no longer works directly for Freenet, but is now a president of Community Wireless Communications, the service provider of Freenet.

“Lawrence is one of the only cities in the world that has city wide wireless network,” Montgomery said. “So Lawrence is really at the cutting edge of technology.”

The lower cost to the service satisfied a customer like Sullivan. Freenet tries to maximize the benefit to the community even more. Freenet provides free Internet service to one low-income families for every 10 new subscribers. Freenet provides the free service to more than 100 low-income families in Lawrence.

“Our goal is to provide the broadband Internet for every resident in Lawrence,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery said Freenet has been adding 10 new customers a day on average. He aims to increase customers by 2,000 in 60 days.

Six newspaper boxes made their debuts downtown last Saturday to enhance the quality of the wireless network in the area. These boxes have a radio transmitter inside and send out the signals. The quality of the service needs to grow along with the increase of customers.

Burton said she has not had major concern about the service so far, but noticed the signals of the wireless network fluctuate depending on the location of her laptop.

“In between downtown and campus, it’s really hard to get connection,” Burton said. “They have really good downtown connection and really good campus connection. So maybe they can fill the gap a little bit.”

The organization’s network does not cover North Lawrence. Montgomery said the company would identify the area that needs improvement and install more than 500 radio transmitters in the next year and a half. He said it can make the speed of the service faster.

Patrick Knorr, the general manager of Sunflower Broadband, said Freenet can satisfy the need of people who do not need phone or cable but only Internet service. Knorr said the strength of Sunflower is that customers receive signal through a cable line. The shield of the cable protects signals from interference from other electric devices on the air and gives stability of the service.

“If mobility is more important than reliability, it could be a good choice,” Knorr said. “The wireline service, we think, is more reliable than the wireless service, with more stable and reliable connection.”

Katie Mika, customer service representative for Sunflower Broadband, interacted with customers who uses Lawrence Freenet. Mika said they complain about the poor connection. She said of those she talked to, more than 10 customers had switched the service to Sunflower Broadband in the past week.

Although Sunflower already has 25,000 customers, Knorr said the competition for the Internet market would be a challenge for the company.

“I think competition is good. It keeps making everybody sure that they provide customer service,” Knorr said. “As long as people have some choices, I think that will make people strive to be better.”

Wayne Sailor does not believe in disability. He uses “people who require extra supports and services,” instead of saying disability. 


“I believe that people are given the opportunity to master challenges in their environment and provided resources,” said Sailor, professor of special education and associate director of the Beach Center on Disability at the University. “I think that the concept of disability places the problem in the individual as if it were disease and there’s no particular cure.” 


Sailor recently received the Distinguished Research Award from the Arc of the United States at its 56th annual convention. The Arc of the United States is an organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The national award honored his research on education of children with disabilities and project of school, which aims to benefit all kinds of students.


Sailor has taught in the department of special education since 2001. He has been a researcher for more than 30 years. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his undergraduate degree from University of California-Berkeley. He came to the University of Kansas and received his doctorate in clinical psychology in 1969. He got his first job at the University of Toronto, where he met his wife, Wendy Turnbull. 


“We had so much in common, including our world view. We are both very concerned about social justice issues,” said Turnbull, a psychologist at Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics. “He believes that each one of us should try to leave the world the little bit better than when we arrived.”


He worked at the Kansas Neurological Institute as a research psychologist from 1971 to 1975. And he moved to the department of special education at San Francisco State University. Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975. The law assured free public education to all children with severe disabilities. The state university was looking for people who could prepare teachers to work with those children.

Sailor said he entered into special education because he had done research on a method to teach language to children with severe cognitive disabilities. 


Sailor had developed the training programs for teachers of children with a disability for San Francisco and state of Hawaii while he worked for San Francisco State University.


“I got really into special education primarily because of my research interest and how you can effectively teach people skills that they may have missed because of being labeled disabled,” Sailor said. “For me there is a solution to special education. It’s through effective teaching.”


Sailor rejects the concept of disability. He believes the problems lie in the environment of children. He says changing the environment or providing effective teaching can improve children’s behaviors. 


Turnbull defined Sailor’s character as “intellectually curious.” Sailor’s interest currently goes beyond special education. 


Sailor developed the idea into a comprehensive school reform model with Blair Roger, an educational consultant in Oakland,Calif., in 2002. The reform model is called Schoolwide Applications Model, also known as SAM. Sailor, Roger and faculty members from the Beach Center have worked on the school reforming project using SAM. 


The conventional education system separates students into different class rooms such as general education, special education and English as a Second Language. SAM suggests all students should learn in one class room regardless of their different abilities. General education instructors will oversee all students in class. The program will provide tutors or tutorial sections if students need extra help to learn in the class. 

Three school districts in the U.S., including the Recovery School District in New Orleans, have adapted SAM. Sailor and his team provides training to administrators and teachers of those schools. Those schools are in low-income and multicultural areas, and their academic performance were low.


Sailor said overall the data showed the positive effects in students’ academic performance so far. His contribution to the project brought him the award from the Arc of the United States this year. 


“Dr. Sailor is an exceptional researcher,” said Amy McCart, who is a research assistant professor at the Beach Center and works on the SAM with him. “He has persistently focused on reforming education to meet children who often do not get the supports and services they are entitled to.”


Sailor enjoys teaching and supervising doctoral students at the University as well as his research.


“Probably the most exciting part of my job is helping doctoral students to begin to shape their ideas and leadership in new ideas in the field,” Sailor said. “I think that’s my chief motivation for working in the Beach Center.” 


Jeong Hoon Choi, a research assistant at the Beach Center for Disabilities, used to be a doctoral student of Sailor. He has worked with Sailor for the school reforming project. 


Choi said he liked Sailor’s approach to students and coworkers. Sailor leaves decisions to students rather than gives a direct response or critique. 


“I like his way of thinking,” Choi said. “He really respects each person’s style.”

Douglas County will Update Long-Range Transportation Plan

Sachiko Miyakawa

Transportation 2030, Douglas County’s long-range transportation plan, will begin identifying the residents’ concerns. The committee members of Transportation 2030 will review public comments at the meeting on October 11. The members will also discuss the results of traffic modeling done by Kansas Department of Transportation and future work for the committee.

The Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Department updates its long-term transportation plan every five years. The committee will submit the proposal to the Federal Highway Administration at the end of November to receive federal funding. The Transportation 2030 known as “T2030” covers automobile, pedestrian, public transit and bicycle transportation.

“It will impact how people go to work or go to school or how they live,” said
Anson Gock, senior transportation planner for the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department.

The T2030 committee hosted public meetings in Lawrence, Eudora and Baldwin City in the past month to discuss problems with the residents. The residents can also submit their concerns on the T2030 Web site. The committee will form the plan based on the residents’ concerns and the committee’s recommendations.

Lisa Harris, the chair of the T2030 committee, said more than 40 people attended the public meeting in Lawrence. Their requests ranged from an increase of bicycle lanes and routes to sidewalk maintenance. They also asked for the improvement in public transit and traffic congestion. She said the committee would discuss the possibility of widening roads and changing the signal timing to relieve congestion on Thursday. The meeting will also cover constructing the bicycle path between K-10 and I-70 and coordinating transit between Lawrence and Topeka on Thursday.

Harris said T2030 aimed to fix the problems that had not been solved in the past decades such as traffic congestion. She said the plan should also provide appropriate facilities and sidewalks to newly developed areas.

“I think transportation is one of the most important things in the community, and its development is important for the quality of it life,” Harris said. “The goal is to make it safer and more convenient.”

Cliff Galante, administrator of Lawrence public transit and member of the T2030 committee, addressed the vision of future transportation.

Some people complained about traffic congestion on Lawrence’s roads. Galante said traffic congestion would continue to increase along with the community growth in Lawrence by 2030.

“The challenge for us is, as a community, how do we keep pace with the growth in terms of being able to put down the infrastructure to maintain good traffic flow in our community. That’s very difficult,” Galante said. “Then you have to look at alternatives. Those alternatives include transit, bikeways, pedestrian sidewalks to move people.”

Galante said reinforcing the transit system will attract more people to the city. Companies may want to locate their businesses in the community, where employees can go to work without driving.

Galante said cooperating with KU transit is one of the big issues in the T2030 committee. He said the partnership will enable them to provide cost and service efficiency. It will benefit University of Kansas students and faculty. It will help reduce the numbers of drivers and need for parking facilities on campus.

Galante said he also recommended the committee to consider the land use for transit and transit service for the elderly. U.S. News & World Reports has recently ranked Lawrence as one of the “Best Places to Retire.” Galente cited the news and said Lawrence public transit should prepare for the growing need of paratransit, service for people who cannot ride fixed-route buses because of a disability.

Eric Struckhoff participated in T2030 as the chair of Lawrence Douglas County Bicycle Advisory Committee. Struckhoff said riding a bicycle can be an alternative to driving a car and relieve congestion in the community. He encourages people to ride a bicycle.

While Struckhoff works on improving facilities, he tries to raise people’s awareness of bicycles. He said he thinks the University does not have enough bicycle facilities. The facilities plan of T2030 covers the campus area, including the installment of the bike lane behind Watson Library. He said the University hesitated to adopt the plan, but he would like to see the University install the facilities and raise awareness of bicycles on campus.

“In Lawrence, we have good motorists and good cyclists and our roads are good shape,” Struckhoff said. “This is a good place to ride a bike. We have a lot of bike riders, which increase awareness and increase safety.”

Don’t limit tomorrow’s choice

Sachiko Miyakawa

If you use a restroom on the main floor of the Kansas Union, you’ll see a new paper towel machine that senses the motion of your hands and gives you a paper towel automatically.

Wayne Pearse, the building engineer of the KU Memorial Unions, said the hands-free paper towel machines would keep restroom users from consuming too much paper. He plans to install the paper towel machines throughout the whole building.

Pearse said he wanted to reduce costs at the Kansas Union. He also said he hoped students would learn about sustainability and change their behaviors.

“The hope is, with all of us, that they will learn that I only need this much paper to dry my hands,” He said. “We’d like to think we’re helping their cultural change.”

Pearse recently received the staff Sustainability Leadership Award. The KU Center for Sustainability recognized his contribution to create the environmentally friendly Kansas Union. Installing the new paper towel machines is one of the projects that he and the Union staff have worked on to conserve resources at the Kansas Union. The Kansas Union is the second largest building on campus, but its energy consumption ranks only 11th, according to the Web site of the Center for Sustainability.

Pearse’s effort affects many people on campus.

David Mucci, director of the KU Memorial Unions, said about 7,500 people come to the Kansas Union each weekday during the semester.

Jeff Severin, director of the Center for Sustainability, said Pease’s idea improved energy conservation. He also enhanced the recycling system that has reduced landfill waste.

The Union’s heating and cooling bills have also been lower, thanks to software called the EMS Scheduler, a product of Streamside Solutions. Before the Kansas Union and Burge Union installed the system in 1998, people sat down at a workstation and controlled the temperatures of the buildings themselves. The new system saves labor. Now, if you reserve a meeting room or ballroom at the Kansas Union, the air conditioner or heater automatically comes on and shuts off at the appointed time. The system reduces the building’s energy use because the heater or air conditioner isn’t running while rooms are not in use.

Pearse said the Kansas Union has saved about $26,000 for electricity and 500 hours of labor a year using the system, which cost only $10,000 to install. The two Unions were the first buildings in the United States to use the EMS Scheduler, and they were still the only buildings on campus using the system.

If you arrive earlier or stay later than your reservation time, the heater will be off.

Pearse said people sometimes came into a room when the heater and air conditioner were off and complained about the temperature.

“There’s no reason for a heater to be running if nobody’s in the room,” he said. “I would imagine on campus there are people who expect their lab or their office to be conditioned for them all the time in case they come in. That’s the mindset that has to change.”

Pearse said he would always look for new ideas to encourage sustainability at the Kansas Union.

Pearse install waterless urinals in Jayhawk Central, a student union at the Edwards Campus two years ago. Instead of flushing water, the urinals use a cartridge that grabs liquid going down and keeps odor from coming back. Each cartridge costs $18. Each waterless urinal saves approximately 60,000 gallons of water annually.

He said he planned to install the urinals for the Kansas Union in a year or two. But ten times more people use the restroom at the Kansas Union than the one at Jayhawk Central. Pearse is not sure how long each cartridge will last at the Union. The urinals won’t be successful if replacing the cartridges costs more than is saved on the water bill.

Pearse and his coworker, Kirby Ostrander, the Union custodial supervisor, also initiated the use of green cleaning products. Employees clean the building using a detergent made from oranges that is harmless for the environment. Instead of regular cloths, they also use micro-fibers, which pick up more dust and need less detergent.

“I want this world to be good for my kids,” Pearse said. “My great-great-great-grand-children that I’ll never see, if I was to find out there’s nothing left for them because of how we act, that would be terrible. We have got to learn not to be so wasteful.”

The Center for Sustainability at the University opened in February to address the environmental and sustainability issues on campus. The goals of the Center include educating people on campus and finding ways to save money in campus operations.

Severin said the Center should also provide information and research opportunities to students and faculty who are interested in environmentalism.

“We’d just like to really see sustainability become a core part of what the campus does all the time, rather than kind of special interest or something that only a certain people care about,” said Stacey White, director of academic programs at the KU Center for Sustainability and associate professor of urban planning.

The Center created its first Sustainability Leadership Awards to celebrate Campus Sustainability Day on Oct. 24 at the University. Several students and faculty received the award besides Pearse.

White said she hoped the Center would host the awards annually.

“There are so many people who are doing really good work on campus related to sustainability,” White said. A lot of times, they aren’t recognized for that. So we’d like to serve to call attention to that good work.”

Students learn solar energy at Southwest Junior High

Sachiko Miyakawa

Elizabeth Schultz, a KU professor emerita of English, worries young people today know less and less about the natural world. She said more young people are raised in a city. They are afraid of insects, frogs and snakes. They have never grown their own vegetables. She said some young people depend on fast food and plastic bottles. They could not imagine a life without a heater or air conditioning.

“Though they may be aware of global environmental crises,” Schultz said. “They really, I think, have very little understanding of what it means to live a sustainable life.”

Schultz created the Elizabeth Schultz Environmental Fund. The fund supports environmental projects in Douglas County. She said she hoped a solar power project at Lawrence Southwest Junior High School would help students learn about alternative energy sources. She wanted students to recognize problems like future scarcities of water and fossil fuels. She also said students could think about using other means. They may carpool and ride a bicycle instead of just driving a car.

Southwest Junior High School recently installed a solar power generator on the roof of its building and had a ceremony last month. A kiosk in the school's hallway shows the amount of energy generated. It also has a presentation that explains the process of generating solar electricity. The solar installation teaches students in science classes about solar electricity.

Bonneville Environmental Foundation or BEF, paid for most of the solar installation cost, which was about $24,000. Seven thousand dollars came from the Douglas County Community Foundation's Elizabeth Schultz Environmental Fund. BEF is a non-profit organization in Portland, Ore., supporting watershed restoration and development of renewable energy like solar and wind power in the United States. The foundation also started Zephyr Energy, partnering with Bowersock Mills and Power Company, hydroelectric energy producer in Lawrence. Zephyr Energy encourages the establishments of new renewable energy facilities.

Sarah Hill-Nelson, a representative of BEF and owner and operator of Bowersock, initiated the project at Southwest Junior High School in 2006 to encourage students to learn about electricity and raise awareness of clean energy. She also applied for the grant from the Elizabeth Schultz Environmental Fund to cover the rest of the cost.

“It’s only a 1.2 kilowatt,” Hill-Nelson said. “It’s not designed to be a big producer. It’s really designed for the educational aspect.”

The school’s science classes follows lessons provided by Solar 4R Schools, a division of BEF. Trish Bransky, the principal at Southwest Junior High School, said the school would use the solar project to teach physical science and environmental issues. She said students would also use the graphs and charts generated by the kiosk in a math class.

Bransky said one of the lessons asked students to read a electric meter at home so that they could know how much energy their home is using. Also some lessons encourage students to look at current energy-related events and global warming issues.

“This is the age when students start to make opinions about how they want to live their lives,” Bransky said. “They are becoming aware of all sorts of issues. They are very concerned about the environment. They don’t want to live in a polluted world. The more we help them see that there are some choices that can be made, the better they will become making choices.”

Hill-Nelson said her goal is to to promote more renewable energy and reduce coal-generated energy. But in the short run, she said she wanted to have another solar project in one or two years.

Hill-Nelson said 78 percent of Lawrence's electricity came from coal. Her goal is to promote more renewable energy and reduce coal-generated energy.

She also said she wanted have another solar project in one or two years at another junior high school in Lawrence or the University of Kansas.

“We’re going to start making changes about the way we generate and use electricity,” Hill-Nelson said. “We have to start making students think about this stuff.”

Posted by Sachiko Miyakawa on December 7, 2007 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)