Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• As referenced in the comments section of yesterday’s Heard on the Hill post, the cleaning and sprucing up of KU’s war memorials came with some assistance from the KU Collegiate Veterans student group.

I placed a call to Jake Robinson, the group’s vice president and a senior from Oberlin, to get some more information.

He said his group undertook the effort after noticing that several of the monuments were getting dingy and dirty.

Particularly, Robinson said, someone had vandalized the inside of the campanile and written profanities on some of the names listed there.

The group worked with Jeff Weinberg, assistant to the chancellor, to get the memorials cleaned and in good shape, said Robinson, a veteran of the U.S. Army who has served overseas — he was lucky and only served one tour, he said.

The effort, dubbed Operation Jayhawk Honor, is just the latest in a long line of positive things to come from the student group.

• And speaking of Weinberg, I received confirmation from KU on Thursday that he will take phased retirement starting next year.

During the next academic year, he will work half-time in the chancellor’s office.

The year after that, he will work half-time in the Honors Program as an honors fellow. In the past, Weinberg has taught an honors tutorial, a one credit hour course that students in KU’s Honors Program take in their first year at KU.

I’m still gathering additional details, and look for a larger story later. In the meantime, here’s a bit of information on KU’s phased retirement policy and what that means for people who take advantage of the program.

• Rock Chalk, and Roll Tide.

That’s the message from a group of KU students who are headed to Tuscaloosa and the University of Alabama to help with the storm cleanup efforts there.

Adam Smith, a KU meteorology student, is leading some fundraising efforts through a blog.

He and other KU weather students are hoping to go to the storm-ravaged area after graduation on May 22.

“We all love the weather and we love chasing tornadoes, but watching the devestation in Tuscaloosa made us feel helpless,” Smith wrote on the blog.

The group intends to help with the clean-up effort, and help however they can.

• If you’ll excuse me, I’m busy weeping because CBS and basketball announcer Gus Johnson have parted ways. I’ll miss his screamingly (that’s probably not a word, but, hey, they’ve all got to get started somewhere) enthusiastic calls. The only thing that will console me is tips for Heard on the Hill. Send them to ahyland@ljworld.com.