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Autopsy results pending as KU student mourned By Stephen Montemayor smontemayor@ljworld.com
Many people saw Gianfranco Villagomez-Saldana leave a party near Ninth and Michigan streets early Saturday morning, walking alone out into the cold, but no one yet knows what led to his death a few blocks away, according to Sgt. Trent McKinley, a Lawrence Police Department spokesman. As the Kansas University community mourned the
death of Villagomez-Saldana, a 23-year-old student from Peru, police said they were awaiting autopsy results later this week to learn the cause of death. They do not at this point suspect foul play, McKinley said. McKinley said that Villagomez-Saldana was with a group of fellow international students who gathered at a home at Ninth and Michigan after having dinner at a local restaurant. Police have talked to many of the 30 or so people thought to have
attended the party. They’ve received conflicting reports about whether Villagomez-Saldana was seen drinking. “We don’t Villagomezknow at this Saldana point in time if he was intoxicated,” McKinley said, “or if he was aware of his surroundings or not. He had been in town for years.”
Nor do police know why he left the party alone, McKinley said. A nearby homeowner, who declined to be interviewed, found the man’s body on Monday afternoon behind her house in the 800 block of Avalon Road, a dead end street at the west edge of the Village Square apartment complex. The house backs up to a steeply sloped wooded area that connects to backyards of homes on the next street uphill, Broad-
view Drive. With no alleyway or sidewalk, the only way to access the area would be through yards. When Villagomez-Saldana was first reported missing Saturday evening by his girlfriend, Donna Jo Harkrider, he was described as last seen wearing a blue shirt with a KU Jayhawk logo on it, a long sleeve gray shirt, a black jacket, jeans and white tennis shoes. Early Saturday Please see STUDENT, page 2A
State board votes to keep development of tests at KU
Freshman blues in Florida loss
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Vote means Kansas will no longer participate in assessment consortium By Peter Hancock phancock@ljworld.com
Nick Krug/Journal-World Photo
KANSAS GUARD WAYNE SELDEN HEARS THE ROAR OF A RAUCOUS FLORIDA STUDENT SECTION during a run by the Gators in the first half on Tuesday at O’Connell Center in Gainesville, Fla. The Jayhawks lost to Florida 67-61, the third loss in four games. The starting lineup included four freshman, possibly the first time in history that many freshman have started a game. See Sports, 1B.
City hears lighting plan concerns for complex By Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
City leaders and a neighbor to the Rock Chalk Park sports complex will meet in the coming days after city officials conceded Tuesday that a lighting plan for the complex hadn’t been properly approved. “This clearly has been botched,” said Richard Hird, a Lawrence attorney who represents Jack Graham, who lives just east of the Rock Chalk Park site near
Sixth Street and the South Lawrence Trafficway. City commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting were told by the city’s planning director that the 100-foot tall light poles for the softball, track and field and soccer fields at Rock Chalk Park already have been installed, even though the City Commission hadn’t yet approved a lighting plan for the project. When the project was approved by commissioners earlier this year, it was done so with spe-
cific conditions, including that a lighting plan would be approved by comCITY missioners COMMISSION before any building permits would be issued for the project. “I apologize for this failure to follow the proper procedure,” Mayor Mike Dever told Graham during the meeting.
The project is being built by a firm led by Lawrence businessman Thomas Fritzel, who previously has been criticized for moving ahead on projects without proper city approval. In 2011, Fritzel was involved in a project that installed artificial turf at an apartment complex, despite not having city code approval for the turf. Last year, Fritzel agreed to make a $50,000 donation to a historic preservation fund to resolve a dispute regarding whether he
The Kansas State Board of Education today effectively dropped out of a multistate consortium that is developing student assessments aligned to the controversial new Common Core standards for reading and math. Instead, the board voted to continue contracting with Kansas University’s Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation to design and administer the tests that students take each year to measure how well the schools themselves are meeting state and federal performance standards. That’s the same group that has developed and administered state assessments for Kansas schools for the last several years. The 8-2 vote came after Waugh a lengthy discussion among board members. And it came only after the board deadlocked in a 5-5 tie on the recommendation of an advisory committee to use the SmarterBalanced Assessment Consortium as the primary test to be given each year to students in grades 3 through 8, and once in high school. Kansas had been a gov- The state erning state in SmarterBal- approves anced, one of two multi- handwriting state groups that received standards. federal grants from the Page 5A Obama administration to develop new tests aligned to the Common Core standards. “I will vote in favor of the motion, with extreme reservations,” said board member
Please see LIGHTING, page 2A
Please see TESTS, page 2A
Interim director of Headquarters focusing on ‘firm business footing’ By Giles Bruce gbruce@ljworld.com
Steve Lopes was recently assigned the task of coming up with a job description for an interim director of Headquarters Counseling Center, the Lawrence-based crisis hotline. During his presentation to its board of directors, Lopes, a volunteer at Headquarters for the past two years, let it slip that he’d be will-
ing to do it. The board took him up on his offer. Lopes, who was named interim director Saturday and is operating the center with a Lopes team of unpaid volunteers, said he plans to lead Headquarters into the “21st century,” mak-
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now advised to call a national suicide hotline). Epstein’s supporters started online petitions demanding that United Way of Douglas County, one of Headquarters’ main funding sources, investigate Epstein’s dismissal, and another asking that board president David Moore and vice president Allison Lopez resign over the split. (Epstein’s supporters have reportedly backed off their
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ing improvements in the way it does business to keep it an independent entity. It’s been a roller coaster of a few weeks for Headquarters. First, Marcia Epstein, who had directed the center since 1979, and the board abruptly decided to part ways. Then, the board announced that for the first time in decades the facility would no longer be open from midnight to 8 a.m. (overnight callers are
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protests on the advice of her attorney; neither the board nor Epstein will comment on the specifics of her departure.) Beyond that, Headquarters, which started in 1969 as a drug crisis center for Lawrence youth, has seen its funding cut in half since 2011 and its volunteer staff decrease by about a third in recent years, at a time Please see INTERIM, page 2A
Person of the year? Feelings are mixed in Kansas over the inclusion of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as one of 10 finalists for Time magazine’s Person of the Year award. Page 3A
Vol.155/No.345 32 pages