Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Volek)

Students can vote next month on whether to raise their fees for new buses and for a system where they won’t need to buy a bus pass.

The Student Senate has proposed two new fees of $20 and $15 per semester. These fees would be paid by all students in addition to the current transportation fee of $18 per semester. The $20 fee would go towards buying new buses for KU on Wheels. The $15 fee would be used to provide a fare free system for all students.

The current cost of a semester bus pass is $75 and a year long pass is $140. According to a report provided by Jessica Mortinger, Transportation Coordinator for the Student Senate, if the $15 fee is accepted by the students, bus passes would no longer be necessary and students would pay $22 less per semester.

The report stated that the buses being used by KU on Wheels today are decades old and require repairs. The proposed fee of $20 would be used to purchase three or more buses per year over the next 10 years. The buses would be outfitted to meet the current standards for emissions and would have the ability to run on B5, a bio-fuel that is used by all diesel vehicles at KU.

The new buses would have exhaust releases on top, said Jason Boots, President of the Student Senate. That means, “No more smoke-in-the-face effect,” he said.

The new buses would be accessible for students with disabilities in compliancy with the Americans with Disabilities Act. KU on Wheels buses are not accessible now.

"All new buses will be wheelchair accessible," said Mortinger

The election will be held online on February 14 and 15. The special election is being held before the annual Student Senate election in April so that the students' votes may be considered during negotiations between KU on Wheels and the City of Lawrence concerning the consolidation of KUOW and the City's transit system.

The vote will only be certified if 10 percent of the student body votes.

Business owners in Kansas will soon have a new kind of tough customer –one who’s shopping for handiness, not bargains.

The Jayhawk Center Area Agency on Aging is working on a statewide project, the Elderly Friendly Program, that would give senior citizens a chance to rate the accessibility of Kansas businesses.

The JAAA will train volunteers ages 60 and older to enter businesses as customers with a critical eye. The seniors will be on the lookout for the readability of advertisements, signs and prices on products. They will look at convenience of location and accessibility for disabilities, such as wheelchair ramps.

“I would love to see that,” said Lawrence resident Alice Norris, 66. “You can manage if you have to, but if you’re a little, old short person, it’s hard to do things like reaching things up high.”

Norris said she would also like to see improvements in business listings in the phone book. “When I’m looking for a store, it’s not where I can find it in the phone book,” she said.

Businesses have to request the service through the JAAA, but will have no idea when a secret senior shopper might be coming. Sarah Williamson, Public Relations and Marketing Supervisor for the JAAA said she hopes this will spur businesses to make improvements and be constantly aware of seniors.

If a business passes its evaluation, JAAA will present it with a certification. The business can then display a sticker that shows it is “elder friendly.” JAAA will then list the business in an Elderly Friendly Directory, which they will provide to anyone interested. If it does not pass, the JAAA will give the store tips for improvement.

Don Buschell, Manager of Hobby Lobby in Lawrence said that making his store accessible to senior citizens is a priority. “My store caters to a wide age span, but I think it is absolutely a great idea. We have wheelchairs and power doors, but we’re not sure what more seniors might need,” he said.

The United States Census Bureau shows the elderly in Kansas will soon be a force to be reckoned with. By the year 2030, people 60 years and older will make up 25 percent of the population of Kansas.

“It is clear that businesses in our state will need to address their elder friendliness if they plan to survive,” said Williamson

De Soto resident Marian Russell, 76, says she thinks somebody needs to keep tabs on how stores serve seniors. “When you get older, you sometimes feel invisible,” she said.

Kenneth Brouhard of Lawrence, Kan. has been leading a double life. The mild-mannered house painter dons a red, white and blue top-hat every weekday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.to become his alter-ego: Uncle Sam. Brouhard, as Sam, stands outside of a Liberty Tax Service in Lawrence and gyrates to rock music blaring from a boom-box. Passersby honk their car horns and cheer on Brouhard as he waves furiously to get his message across: "I want you…to get a speedy tax return."

Liberty Tax Service has employed “wavers,” such as Brouhard since its first store opened in the U.S. in 1998. The wavers work in full costume as either Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty. Many simply stand or give the occasional wave, but Brouhard prefers to dance.

“It’s better to look goofier,” he said.

But the results of the goofiness are no joke. “I would say that the wavers bring in well over 50 percent of our customers,” said Richard Todd, Manager of a Liberty Tax Service in Lawrence.

The wavers have become a symbol of the service nationwide. Some have even appeared on the Today Show. Julie Thornton, a tax preparer who works at three of the service’s locations remembers the first time she saw the wavers.

“My gosh! They looked like they were really having a good time,” she said

Thornton said business largely depends on the wavers’ enthusiasm.

“It’s so interesting how much difference the waver’s attitude can have on the emotional impact to someone driving by. In some cases, it can make a person’s day,” she said.

The tax service has ridden these waves all the way to become one of the biggest tax preparers in the nation.

John Hewitt, CEO of Liberty Tax Service, scribbled the idea for the Lady Liberty icon on a cocktail napkin in 1996. Hewitt was CEO of Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, and was forbidden by contract to compete with the service after leaving in 1997.

So, Hewitt opened his first Liberty Tax Service in Canada. He opened five stores in the U.S. in 1998 when his no-compete contract ran out. The service has expanded to 2,400 offices since then and has advertised mostly through use of wavers.
“Wavers are the single most effective marketing tool we have,” said Thornton.

Nina Cunningham, Public Relations Director for the service, said that the wavers were a planned part of their strategy from the beginning. She described the wavers as a “guerrilla marketing” technique. The wavers are more in-you-face than other ads such as billboards. “Every two hours that a waver is outside, he pulls in a customer,” she said.

The method is pulling its weight. Since its start, Liberty Tax Services is now in the top three most successful tax preparers in the nation. The other two are H&R Block and Hewitt’s former company, Jackson Hewitt. The service has been steadily increasing sales, gaining over $10 million yearly in revenue.

Guerrilla marketing was developed by Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984. In his book, Guerilla Marketing Success Secrets, he recommends businesses try unusual methods of advertising, such as public theatrics, to attract customers.

Liberty Tax Service has gone out of its way to bring in the crowds with attention-getters. Stores nationwide throw slumber parties to celebrate the end of tax season. They offer tax preparation at the parties all night long. Wavers often hand out cookies at surrounding businesses.

But Tim Bengston, Associate Professor at the University of Kansas and author of Advertising Slogans USA says that the wavers reflect poorly on the business.
“For my money, they’re making fools out of themselves and they’re a distraction to drivers,” Bengston said.

“They seem to be saying, ‘we don’t know what we’re doing, so we’re trying this.’”

The waver method does little beyond draw attention to the store. Wavers do not hold ad signs and are not trained to do much more than cause a spectacle. They start out at seven dollars per hour. They get a ten dollar bonus if mentioned by a customer.

“I stand out there waving, dancing and get paid to do it,” Brouhard said.

While the job lacks medical benefits, he thinks it has its perks.

“Sometimes students hang out of their cars and yell. Girls: that’s the cool part,” Brouhard said.

You do not want to have to call Don McNulty. Sure, he’s a nice enough guy; friendly and compassionate. But he is the president of a company that punches in only when others are punching out.

Bio Cleaning Services of America, Inc. offers the kind of services that no one wants to think about, but someone must provide. Their mission is to clean up after trauma and death sites including murders, suicides and unattended deaths, or “de-comps.” Their motto: “No one should be victimized twice.”

Mr. McNulty and his wife, Laura, started the business 14 years ago. Today, they are
virtually the only service of their kind that serves areas of Kansas, Missouri and Illinois. McNulty maintains that his is a business just like any other.

“We’ve been cleaning up our own dead since Cain and Able,” McNulty said. “Until the advent of companies like this, it’s been done by friends and family. Most families are looking for someone disconnected to do the cleanup.”

McNulty was a mechanical draftsman and worked in plant management before being tapped to perform hospital housekeeping at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo. That’s where he first learned he had a passion for helping people. He also learned he had a strong stomach.

“They were really good about teaching every member of the staff about medicine; from the janitor on up,” McNulty said of the hospital. “If someone was trying to find me, they’d say ‘Oh, McNulty is downstairs watching a lung removal.’”

Now, McNulty has his own business with offices in St. Louis, Omaha, Neb., Des Moines, Iowa and Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He said his background in engineering helped him prepare for his current job, which he feels is much more complex than most people anticipate.

“In order to do a cleanup, you have to know about deconstruction and how things fit together,” he said. “What we do is constructive demolition.”

Dirty Work

McNulty and his cleaning technicians typically handle three types of cleanup sites: murder scenes, suicide scenes and unattended death scenes in which a person’s decomposing body has gone undiscovered for days. In the case of such a “de-comp,” as McNulty calls them, sometimes sections of flooring, walls or other parts of the house have to be removed.

“You wouldn’t believe the smell that can create,” McNulty said. “It is very difficult to get rid of.”

His service also handles the occasional cleanup of a meth-lab and other “unsanitary dwellings.” Most of their business, however, comes from suicides. According to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, there are nearly 400 suicides each year in the state of Kansas alone. There are 14 suicides for every 100,000 residents in McNulty’s area. Nearly 70 percent of suicides involve self-inflicted gunshot wounds which can create extremely gory scenes.

Many of these types of suicides are carried out in automobiles. McNulty estimated that his technicians clean between 80 and 110 automobiles involved in suicides per year. Unattended deaths make up the second most frequent type of cleanup, with murder in third.

McNulty and his technicians recently cleaned the Ward Parkway Shopping Center in Kansas City, Mo. following an incident in which a gunman killed two people before killing himself. A job of that size can be especially taxing. By Kansas law, McNulty’s service must assume that any blood is contaminated and must be sanitized. In the case of the mall shooting, wounded shoppers ran through many areas of the mall while bleeding all the way. McNulty and his crew took three days to completely clean and sanitize the mall.

All cleanups are different, but the average cost for the customer is $2,000. In most cases, house insurance covers the bill. McNulty has even worked pro-bono and at discount rates in the past to accommodate grieving families unable to pay.

Now, his business can rest easier, and more importantly, so can anyone unfortunate enough to have to call on such a service. The Kansas House of Representatives recently passed a bill that will help survivors pay for cleanups through the Crime Victims Compensation Board. The board will pay up to $1,000 for an individual cleanup.

CSI it isn't

McNulty screens all potential technicians to weed out those that are trying to satisfy a morbid curiosity.

“They might say, ‘Well, I want to go to work for you,’ and when I ask them what makes them think they can be a bio-tech, they say ‘Well, I watch CSI,’” he said.

Others are often disappointed to see the lack of high-tech equipment in a bio-cleaning truck. Most of the cleaning products are typical disinfectants. The company uses environmentally friendly cleaners and degreasers. They even use such mundane cleaners as thyme, the “spice your mother has in her cabinet,” says McNulty.

‘Just so much matter’

Even though there are some who think it might be exciting to see such gore, the real shock comes from another place. For the technicians, the hardest part is dealing with the grief and interacting with bereaved families.

‘We have good days and bad days,” said Lindsey Trevino, Medical Examiner. “Each case leaves a mark, and unfortunately it does not get easier.”

Technicians often see portraits of the deceased on the walls of a cleanup site. Putting a face to the violence can be scarier than the gore.

“It’s just so much matter,” McNulty said. “That isn’t the person laying all over the floors and all over the walls. All we have are fragments.”

At times, encountering these scenes can lead to serious emotional trauma. Critical Incident Stress Syndrome, or CISS, can sink in and cause a kind of shock similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“As professionals, we are better adept at seeing such things,” Trevino said. “But death will always have an impact, and it’s very difficult to see such disregard for human life.”

The stress from seeing so much grief and violence can cause flashbacks, sleeping disorders and depression.

“When somebody sees a gross, gory scene, the typical response is to go overboard and see recurring images,” Psychologist Anne Owen said.

Technicians at Bio Cleaning Services usually undergo “debriefings” in which they recreate the events and talk out their feelings as a group. If such stress lasts more than one month, it can turn into full blown Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“Getting people to share memories can help put a narrative around the images and make them less traumatizing,” Owen said.

McNulty said grieving family members look to his team for their own closure.
“I’m lachrymose: given to tears,” he said. “If you’re crying, I’m crying. When you’re that kind of person, to be in that room where the grief is so thick, you could cut it with a knife; that becomes the most difficult thing to handle.”

With murder and suicide rates in their current numbers, Bio Cleaning Services of America will no doubt be able to offer their service of “Care, Concern and Peace of Mind” for years to come.

“When I was a kid, I got sick at a blood scene and I told myself from that day forward that I couldn’t be a veterinarian or a doctor because I get sick at the sight of blood,” McNulty said. “Well that’s not true—to say the very least.”