Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Volek)

The KU Department of Student Housing hopes that changes to the reapplication process for on-campus living will lure more residents back for another year.

“We based our changes on providing better, faster service to our returning residents,” said Assistant Director for Assignments Tara Vereen.

Vereen said that eliminating intent to return cards will speed up the process.

In previous years, residents would receive an intent to return card in the mail, fill it out indicating where they desired to live next year, receive and fill out a contract, return it to Corbin Hall along with a $300 initial payment, and receive an offer around the start of March at the earliest.

This year students will receive a room offer when they turn their contract and initial payment in.

“We’ll be giving them their actual assignment and hopefully they’ll be happy with it and stay with us for another year,” said Vereen.

On Jan. 19, residents received housing contracts in the mail.

Students wishing to stay in their current room can start returning contracts and fees on Jan. 29. Those wising to stay in the same hall or apartment can return contracts beginning Feb. 5. People wanting to live in a different hall next year can turn in their contracts starting on Feb. 12. Vereen said that these staggered dates help establish priority amongst varying preferences, but the department will accept contracts at any time.

In the past, residents had to go to Corbin Hall to turn in their contract, but this year Department of Student Housing employees will set up satellite locations at Hashinger Hall and in the Jayhawk Towers. Workers at satellite locations will accept contracts and give out offers on Jan. 29, Feb. 5, and Feb. 12.

“We want to save everyone a trip and bring our services to them,” said Vereen.

Student Housing also introduced a “bill me” option for paying the $300 initial payment. Selecting “bill me” will charge the fee to the student’s KU account.

The department also added a two-year option to the contract. However the option was not designed to save students money.

“It provides families with a tool to plan how to pay for college,” said Vereen.

The two-year contract parallels the University’s four-year tuition rate introduced in 2006.

Uniontown sophomore Josh Decker doesn’t think that convenience will sway anyone’s decision.

“It’s nice that they’re making it easier for us, but it won’t be more important than your experiences in the dorm,” said Decker who lived in Stephenson Scholarship Hall last year and lives in McCollum Hall this year.

Mound City junior Jesse Vaughn agrees that the changes won’t affect anyone’s decision to live on campus.

“For me it depends what whoever I live with and I decide on doing for living arrangements next semester,” said Vaughn.

Despite others’ doubts Vereen remains optimistic about the changes.

“I hope students appreciate and benefit from the extra services we’ve provided for them,” said Vereen.

One city Web site can save you trips to city hall. KUJH-TV reporter Luke Morris explains how the Web site helps the Lawrence community.

Current Lawrence Mayor Mike Amyx doesn’t miss the paper. He doesn’t like to sift through a pile of City of Lawrence documents for information like he did during his time as mayor in the 1980s.

“The piles would be up to two or two and a half inches thick every week,” Amyx said.

Now, with help from the city’s Web site, the mayor searches through a few kilobytes of documents sent to his e-mail instead of a cluster of paper.

“I’m a click away from any information that I need on a project,” Amyx said. “The citizens aren’t any farther.”

The City of Lawrence’s Web site, lawrenceks.org, provides citizens and city officers with numerous resources including city contact information, maps, zoning codes, news on current issues and more.

“Now they don't have to come to the office to get the facts and figures. It's all laid out for them on the Web site,” City of Lawrence Communications Manager Lisa Patterson said.

She said the Web site posts meeting agendas and background on issues just as the city commissioners see them. Patterson said that reports about community topics get posted to the site immediately following the meetings they’re discussed at.

This makes Lawrence Journal World city reporter Chad Lawhorn’s job much easier.

“I'm on the Web site every Tuesday night at commission meetings,” said Lawhorn. “I use my laptop and wireless internet, and look at the agenda on my computer screen while I take notes.”

Every city commissioner has the same setup in front of them at meetings.

Lawhorn said that he uses the Web page to get information at least three times daily. He frequently looks through the archived city documents on the Web site. Lawhorn said that online archiving saves him hours of searching, not to mention plenty of desk space.

“I already have too much paper on and around my desk. I don’t need any more,” said Lawhorn.

The Web site also has interactive elements. A portion of the Web site is devoted to applying for jobs. 400 to 500 people apply for jobs online monthly. Signing up for recreation classes is growing in popularity. Patterson said 53 percent of the classes’ registrations come from the Web site.

Lawrence resident Ryan Hickman enjoys the ability to pay his utility bill online.

“It’s really simple,” said Hickman. “I just sign in, and type in my credit card information, and approve it.”

At this time only credit card payments are accepted online.

Citizens not only interact through city forms. They can find the e-mail address for city officers on the Web site, and send and receive e-mail from them.

“One e-mail can go to five or six commissioners or city staff, rather than having to make five or six different phone calls,” Patterson said.

This term, Amyx’s file cabinets hold a noticeably smaller volume of paper. Amyx likes his computer.

With gas prices and housing costs rising, people find tithing and sharing money with charities more challenging. But now philanthropists can give to their favorite nonprofit organizations without losing money or time. The search engine Goodsearch.com lets users donate a portion of the Web site’s ad revenue to charity of the user’s choice.

GoodSearch, a private company, donates “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to more than 32,000 charities, churches and schools, said Ken Ramberg, the site’s co-founder. Three Lawrence groups use the search engine to raise funds: the Lawrence Humane Society, Boys and Girls Clubs of Lawrence, and Meals on Wheels of Lawrence. All three began using it last year.

“It’s pretty easy on our part,” said Erica Zimmerman, program manager for the Boys and Girls Club at South Junior High. “All we have to do is spread the word. It doesn’t cost us or our supporters anything.”

Lawrence Humane Society director Midge Grinstead and Zimmerman agree that GoodSearch lets new and old contributors donate.

“We’re reaching the people who aren’t able to hand over large amounts of money,” Zimmerman said. “It doesn’t hurt their wallet, and they already search the Internet anyway.”

Nigeria senior Ugo Okoronkwo started using GoodSearch to help the Lawrence Humane Society last month. He said that a tight budget keeps him from giving money on a regular basis.

“I think, even if I’m not donating more than a penny at a time, I’m able to help out the Humane Society,” Okoronkwo said.

Okoronkwo said that he used the search engine exclusively. The organizations also converted to using GoodSearch as their main search engine in the office and at home.

The company sends out checks to the groups for the money they raised annually. A group must make at least $20 to receive a check. In Lawrence only the Boys’ and Girls’ Club received a check for last year, but all three groups said that they are pleased with GoodSearch and continue to use it.

How it works

Large search engines Yahoo! and Google make roughly $6 billion annually, Ramberg said. GoodSearch donates half of its ad revenue, about one cent per search, to charity. Advertisers pay to have their products listed next to the search results.

Organizations receive money based on how many times their supporters use the site. The more supporters, the more money an organization can earn. For example, if a group has 100 supporters who search twice daily, they would raise $730 in a year. If the group doubles its searchers, they would raise twice as much.

Curious how much local nonprofits have made from GoodSearch lately? This chart shows their earnings for February and March.

Groups that fail to raise $20 in the year will not receive a check. “That money is divided pro rata among the groups who raised over $20,” Ramberg said. Totals do not roll over into the next year.

Larger groups such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee have large groups searching for them. Both charities received checks for more than $2,000 for 2006.

Ramberg says that GoodSearch will not limit how much they give away.

“There’s no cap on what we’ll give,” he said. “We earmark 50 percent of all ad revenue coming in toward nonprofits no matter what.”

Too good to be true?

GoodSearch has many skeptics. As word of the site has spread virally over the Net and through word of mouth, so has speculation.

Ramberg wants to assure users that he runs a legitimate Web site. He says that his partnership with Yahoo! followed exhaustive investigation into GoodSearch’s business model and the founders’ and advisors’ backgrounds.

Press coverage also helps give the site credibility and publicity. The New York Times and CNN have featured GoodSearch in their stories. Neither reported a problem within the company.

“We found out about it through TV,” Grinstead said. “One of our volunteers saw it on Oprah and told us about it.”

The Better Business Bureau gave the company a “AA” grade, the second-best, and had no complaints on file.

But organizations that have received checks present GoodSearch’s best proof. “Thousands of companies, national and local, can vouch for us,” Ramberg said.

With no problems reported, skeptics can rest easily: GoodSearch seems legit.

The Inspiration

Ramberg worked closely with nonprofits before he started GoodSearch. He founded JobTrak with his mother, Connie, in 1988. JobTrak was a job-listing database for college students. The company didn't give money to charity, but it let nonprofits to post their job listings free.

GoodSearch has grown quickly since its inception in November 2005. This chart shows the number of nonprofits registered with GoodSearch by quarter.

Ramberg saw firsthand how nonprofits struggle to raise money while his mother fought cancer. He has also experienced the success of enterprise. In 2000, Ramberg sold JobTrak to Monster.com for an undisclosed amount.

“It’s a combination of my two experiences that made this work,” Ramberg said.

He hopes to do more than give money away to organizations in need. Ramberg wants to make giving to charity an everyday process for everyone.

By taking the pocket pain out of helping nonprofits, GoodSearch may make that wish a reality.

A recent study shows that American dads are playing a bigger role in the lives of their children than in past generations. KUJH’s Luke Morris finds out what new responsibilities fathers are taking on.

Interviewees:
Jean Ann Summers, Associate Research Professor

Erik Fish, Lawrence Father

Many students continue to use the controversial Web site Wikipedia.org in their research papers despite teachers' warnings against it. KUJH's Luke Morris reports why the students keep using it.

Interviewees:
Tami Albin, research librarian
Matt Hudson, Humboldt sophomore

Freshmen Blake Baraban, Topeka, and Nick Templin, Wichita, said they used information from Wikipedia in their research papers, but haven’t cited it because they fear teachers will dock their grades.

"I could put as many credible sites as I can find in my paper," Templin said. "But Wikipedia leaves a bad taste in teachers' mouths, and they'll count me off."

While many teachers do not allow students to use Wikipedia on research papers, more and more students are helping establish a better ethos for it. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to or edit, has received a bad name for controversial mistakes in its material, but many editors such as Dan Hoyt, Spearville senior, hope to make the site more credible.

“It’s a really big help in finding information,” Hoyt said. “If we could fix it to make teachers see it as credible, it would make researching for papers a hundred times easier.”

This is a list of the ten most visited Web sites in the world. Check it out and see if your favorite Web site made the list.

Hoyt, who started editing Wikipedia in February, said he spends at least an hour on the site daily. When he’s not researching something, he’s checking entries for factual and grammatical errors. A fan of Samurai culture, Hoyt said he mostly edited entries related to Samurais. In late April he began adding new entries to Wikipedia, including one on the term “War Czar.”

Hoyt isn’t KU’s only recent addition to the Wikipedia community of editors. Erik Bates, Dumas Tex., graduate student, edited a few entries in March. Bates, however doesn’t consider himself an involved “Wikipedian,” but more as “grammar police.”

“I don’t make a habit of looking for errors,” Bates said. “I just fix them as I see them.”

According to Wikipedia, “tens of thousands of regular editors” revise entries daily. It’s impossible to tell how many of those editors hail from KU, but new users like Hoyt and Bates are adding to that number.

How to edit Wikipedia

Editing Wikipedia requires only a computer and an Internet connection. Editors do not have to sign up for an account. Each entry in Wikipedia has an “edit this page” link. From there users can delete, add, or juxtapose text and images.

While Wikipedia sees its open-editing model as a strength, it has caused problems for the site as well. Vandals have left their marks on many entries, replacing fact with ludicrous statements. Most vandalism is fixed “within minutes or hours,” according to Wikipedia.

Baraban said that when he changed the Web site’s entry on the dollar bill to say that he invented the dollar bill, the change was edited quickly.

“It was up for a good 20 minutes before it got changed back,” Baraban said.

The most famous vandalism incident incorrectly linked John Seigenthaler, former assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to the assassinations of Robert and his brother, former President John F. Kennedy. According to a USA Today article, the inaccuracy stayed on the page for four months in 2005. This and similar instances spark controversy concerning the site’s credibility.

Other credibility issues include author bias and out-of-date information.

Teachers’ reactions

The credibility questions have caused many teachers to outlaw Wikipedia use in their classes. They wonder what else has slipped past editors. Middlebury College in Vermont made headlines in February when the school’s history department banned Wikipedia as a cited source.

KU political science graduate teaching assistant Jim Stoutenborough said that he would dock students’ grades for using the Web site as a source.

“When you look at some entries, there are actually warnings that the content might be biased, or even incorrect,” Stoutenborough said. “And most users of Wikipedia blindly assume that everything they read is correct.”

Despite editors’ efforts, Stoutenborough said he doesn’t believe Wikipedia will ever be credible enough to cite in a paper. Though he doesn’t allow citation of Wikipedia, Stoutenborough said he doesn’t mind students using the Web site’s links to other sources.

Political science professor Paul Johnson allows his students to use the site as long as they can confirm the accuracy of the material.

“Sometimes it’s the only place to find something a person said,” Johnson said. “So if they can find the related link that the editor got the information from, I’m okay with it.”
He said although the site will never be totally correct, he understands that Wikipedia contains more accurate information than inaccurate.

Tami Albin, research librarian, estimated that 90 percent of students have used Wikipedia to retrieve information. She agrees that Wikipedia isn’t credible enough to use in a research paper, but says that it’s still useful for research.

“You can use this information as a jumping off point for finding better more in-depth research material for your topic,” Albin said.

Although Matt Hudson, Humboldt sophomore, doesn’t use Wikipedia in his research papers, he understands why many students give into temptation to use the Web site.

“It’s so much easier than actually going through thousands of books or Web sites,” Hudson said. “Wikipedia has all the information one place. They’ve already done all the work for you.”

Where else to look

Albin said that the problems with citing Wikipedia in papers go beyond credibility. She said encyclopedia information wasn’t deep enough for a college-level research paper.

This chart shows how the number of editors on Wikipedia has grown annually since 2001.

“College research goes beyond the encyclopedia,” Albin said. “Students should be using higher-quality material.”

Albin said the best sources to use in research are scholarly articles written by experts in a particular field. She said that KU libraries offer access to thousands of scholarly articles in print and online.

“We have a ton of databases online to help students find what they need,” Albin said.

Stoutenborough, who has written for encyclopedias including The Encyclopedia of American Government and Civics, agrees with Albin, saying that he recommends that his students use scholarly articles instead of encyclopedias.

“One can hardly go wrong with scholarly journals, which are found easily on campus,” Stoutenborough said. “While encyclopedias just give you a basic idea of what you’re looking at, scholarly journals dig deeper into subjects beyond a basic understanding.”

Despite teachers’ warnings, Baraban and Templin said they would likely use Wikipedia on future research papers. But they still won’t cite it for the sake of their grades.