4A
Friday, February 17, 1995
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: ENROLLMENT RECRUITING
Recruiting solution needed to curb enrollment decline
The active recruiting campaign conducted by the chancellor's office in December was, in concept, a wise reaction to dropping enrollment. But as possible budget cuts loom on KU's horizon, this impersonal direct-mail campaign has frivolously spent University funds.
The campaign, which sought to help reverse a recent decline in freshmen enrollment, was aimed at high school seniors who have an ACT score of 22 or higher. Letters were sent to 5,000 of these students, congratulating them on their achievement and inviting them to apply to KU. Active recruiting is a good idea, but the form letters that were sent were highly impersonal. Such letters are hardly different from other brochures and letters sent to high school seniors every day.
A mass mailing of this nature does not help to change the perception that this University is an impersonal behemoth $ ^{o} f $
Active recruiting is necessary,but an impersonal campaign is not the best way to use University funds.
bureaucracy
To help solve these problems, the campaign should have been tailored to specific students' needs, allowing for interaction with the people who actually make KU run — professors, students and administrators. Allowing individual departments to use the money to seek exceptional students in their respective fields is just one way these funds could have been stretched further.
A massive mail campaign is obviously not the only weapon in KU's recruiting arsenal.
More personal alternatives are being used, such as telephone contacts and recruiting visits to each high school in Kansas. The $8,600 used for the direct-mail project could have been better spent.
JOHN COLLAR FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
THE ISSUE: ELIMINATING CREDIT FOR ASSISTANTS
Assistants should earn credit instead of earning a salary
A proposal from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences that would eliminate academic credit and initiate pay for undergraduate teaching assistants flies in the face of the principles that define a college education. Student assistants should be earning credit toward their degrees.
The resolution proposed by the Committee on Undergraduate Studies and Advising no longer would award credit to assistants who not only grade papers and type tests but also lead discussions.
Committee members proposed the change in an attempt to avoid exploiting students. But grading papers and leading discussions hardly qualify as exploitation.
Furthermore, some assistant programs could be eliminated if the resolution is passed. Some programs lack the money needed to pay assistants,
A proposal to pay teaching assistants instead of awarding credit would leave students in a lurch.
and positions in these programs could be eliminated.
This would leave professors without needed help and would prevent many students from earning needed credit. During a time when KU's budget is under close scrutiny and cuts are being made, there will be less money to go around.
Potential teaching assistants, hoping to learn some of the valuable skills associated with teaching, could be left out in the cold.
The teaching assistant's "job" is academically related. The assistants are not merely secretaries. Without question, students preparing exams and leading discussions for other students should continue to receive credit hours toward their degrees.
HENRI BLANC FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Things were looking rosy for big Mudville, Inc. that year.
They had bought another station and were selling loads of beer.
So when the season ended with a strike, "Hey, that's a shame!
But this is business," said the owners, "not some sweet and childish
Casey at the Bank
Kids are playing soccer, when you tell 'em, "Let's play ball"
They strap on gaudy smakers and go dribble in some hall.
Willy's now a killer whale, and Mickey's just a mouse;
DiMaggio, some guy named Joe, who sold coffee house to house.
When the owners dug their heels in, and the players did the same. A strange and awful hush fell over students of the game. With all the talk of contracts, of bottom line and loss, It could be more than revenue this baseball strike has cost.
Oh, somewhere on some future day a dad might take his son To the ballpark for a hot dog (that's eight bucks with the bun) The kid will watch a hero sign a baseball for a fee. And ask his aging father, "Mighty Casey? Who is he?"
Jeff MacNetly / CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Loss of grandparent leaves empty space for new student
When my grandma, Bobbie Jean Coleman, celebrated her 63rd birthday, I had already been accepted to the University of Kansas.
At the time she was totally against the idea of me going to Kansas. She had taken care of me all of my life, and we had never been so divided. To ease things, she constantly reminded me of her upcoming birthday.
I searched all of downtown Dallas looking for the perfect gift for her, which seemed impossible. It wasn't that she had everything but that she required so little. I ended up at a flower shop, and of course I got the "last-minute-insensitive-guy gift" — a dozen roses. They were on sale, too.
I spent an hour standing at the bus stop while the eyes of winos, passersby and bus riders focused on me.
When the bus finally dropped me off, I had to walk seven blocks to my house. And at that moment, West Dallas was a different place. All my life it has been a place where I have lost friends, some to bullets, others to prostitution. But when I walked to my house that day, it was just the place where I grew up.
As I brought out the flowers, she smiled the greatest smile, and her eyes seemed to light up the room. I couldn't believe that anyone could be so happy over something so simple.
When I made it home, I cracked open the screen door, leaned in with the flowers behind my back, and saw my grandma peeling sweet potatoes for that night's dinner. I told her that I looked all over and just couldn't find the right gift and that she'd have to settle for these.
KANSAN STAFF
I walked the streets of my neighborhood, where people die every day and police cars and ambulances are ordinary scenery, and there was nothing that held me there. But only a few months ago, I walked those same streets for the comfort when times were hard. This was mv home.
The people in my house, although they were my family, weren't the people I left behind. My little part in my family was gone, and I was a different person. When they had to do some hard readjusting without my grandma, I wasn't there to readjust with them.
My feelings about KU changed, but when I went home for Christmas break, Dallas just wasn't my home anymore.
But I wish that I could have shown her how much I loved her and that when I went to college to escape, I never meant to imply that I was escaping from her. She wasn't the ideal mother, but she cared for me more than anything and tried so hard to make my life better.
But it was just a summer ago that I was Bobbie Jean's baby.
For a long time I kept beating myself up, because she never gave me her approval to go to KU. It was hard for her because she always knew that I would leave.
I'm here because I wanted her life and mine to be better. I just wanted to be free of government food stamps and living life on hand outs. I wanted to live to be 25, unlike so many of my friends. And now that she's gone, all that I have is to make life better for myself, but it took a semester of being lost at KU to remember that.
Rufus Coleman is a Dallas freshman in journalism.
And even when the flowers wilked in the summer heat, she nursed them as long as she could.
On Aug. 4,1994 my grandma died in her sleep.
When my grandma and I argued, I was reminded that I couldn't go anywhere in life without leaving West Dallas' poverty behind me, and she couldn't see that getting away didn't mean forgetting about her. Maybe she thought that I might not come back.
Sometimes I can barely make out her face in my mind, and that scares me. All that I have to remember her by is a withered ring at the end of a leather string around my neck. But I can still see her nursing those roses. I remember her soft brown eyes and that crazy smile of hers that was almost toothless.
The person that made my home was stone.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Fan confused over cheerleader's reply
Everything that I am or ever will be I owe to her. When my mother was living off the streets, my grandma became my parent. I don't think that I could ever find the words of gratitude I owe her for that. Four days after her funeral, I was on a plane for Kansas.
At the Kansas men's basketball game on Jan. 31, I asked one of the cheerleaders if she would attempt to pump up the alumni section of Allen Field House. Her response was, "Oh, I'm sorry, this is our job. I didn't think that I was offending her, but she got a police officer and claimed that I had been harassing her. The police officer informed me of this and said that if I kept it up, I would be kicked out of the game.
But I couldn't stop thinking that my grandma didn't want me to be here.
I thought about what she said, "our job", and wondered, if it's your job, then why don't you try to get the alumni involved? The students don't need help starting cheers. However, I would like to apologize to that cheerleader if degrade her or I was not trying to degrade her or
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail safes manager
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
Campus mgr ...Beth Pola
Regional mgr ...Chris Bummann
National mgr ...Shelly Palefevle
Coop mgr ...Kelly Cornelye
Special Section mgr ...Brigg Bloomapunt
Production mgrs ...J Cook
Ken Nyman
Marketing director ..Milton Blair
Promotions director ..Justin Francois
Creative director ..Don Gler
Classified mgr ..Liana Kiseltz
her performance I was just trying to make the field house more imposing for the visiting team.
Damon Miller
Overland Park sophomor Kansan celebrates immoral behaviors
The Kansan has made a lamentable decision by publishing another front-page article which celebrates debauchery. The Kansan's Feb. 3 piece on hangovers embodies a philosopy that lifts up selfishness, irresponsibility and depravity above that which is right and good. The article begins by recounting a student's 21st birthday when he passed out after drinking 16 shots of liquor. The article closes with that same student giving his remedy for hangovers: "The only cure is to drink the next day."
The Kansan has placed its editorial stamp of approval on conduct that destroys countless lives and even more souls in this country. Are we so shallow to believe that a culture which revels in drunkenness to the point of incapacitation is not also a product of the same moral perseveration in this country that leads to more than half of all marriages ending in divorce, nearly half of all children being born to single mothers, AIDS being the leading killer of adults aged 25 to 44 and more than 1.5 million abortions annually? No, these problems are all integrally connected. This is a culture which has exchanged the truth for a lie. And the Kansan was apparently one of the first in line to accept the trade.
Jim McMullen
Lawrence first-year law student
Entertainment. It's a word that appears everywhere. The weekly magazine, the tabloid television show, the movie reviews, the outdated Broadway musical.
How about "entertainning" an idea?
To consider an option, or harbor a notion? Or, as in to "entertain" friends for dinner? To extend hospitality toward?
Entertainment has become mindless, requiring no thought on the part of the observer. There is no give and
News ... Caitlin Tojaga
Planning ... Mark Martin
Editorial ... Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial ... Heather Lorenzo
Campus ... David Wilson
College ... Colleen McCain
Sports ... Gary Foy
Associate Sports ... Ashley Miller
Photo ... Jarrett Lane
Features .. Nathan Gloon
Designs .. Blake James
Feelance .. Susan White
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
take, no exchange of information. To feel satisfied, the observer no longer needs to participate in the interpretation of the message.
Whereas "Hoop Dreams," a beautifully composed documentary that causes you to think and question — gas! — was completely shut out.
Just sit back and soak up the dribble. Eat the popcorn, turn up the stereo, click the mouse, flip the channel. And strip for the sponge bath. Weareforce-
STAFF COLUMNIST
No, we're too busy learning that Carol Channing is 69 today.
fed some pale creation, but, like baby birds squawking for regurgitated worms, we open our mouths and beg for more.
Society's ills made evident in meaningless 'entertainment'
Unlike information, which is a tool that can be selected and used by the person, entertainment is pieced together and shaped to satisfy our most ridiculous desires.
With the recent Oscar nominations, we see that entertainment seen worthy of applause needs to be an immensely popular, money-making extravaganza.
Take, for example, "Dumb and Dumber," the "wildly entertaining" runaway smash, which has a policeman drinking urine, Jeff Daniels (who will never be taken seriously again) dumping his brains out, a blind child stroking a dead bird, among various burns, farts and other bodily noises.
This is entertainment? Someone delving into fourth-grade lunchroom stories to write a huge money-making blockbuster success?
The whole movement is lowering the standards all around. Art is not striving to create but to cater. It's not challenging or supporting our ideals but channeling our lusts. Television is the most guilty, but all art forms are guilty to some extent.
Or how about your average formula sitcom. Tonight's episode: a group of friends who live in the same building go off on numerous humorous exploits and put themselves into sexually awkward situations just to be brought back into their little world laughing at some badly phrased pun.
Certainly, it's funny, ha ha, but it's the repeated formula, the lack of experimentation within a medium that stunefies me.
The basic definition of entertainment is something that holds your attention. But, in our culture of factoids, sound bites, samples, quickcuts and tidbits, something that holds the attention of anyone is regarded with immense, almost religious, enthusiasm.
When people are asked what they thought of a mediocre movie, they sigh, "well, it was entertaining." Wow. I gotta see that. Imagine, you sat in a large black theater and some big glowing screen kept your attention.
Aside from giving birthday salutes to obscure celebrities you thought were dead, "Entertainment Tonight" also feels obligated to inform you about the ex-girlfriend of the trash collector of Mezcaluna.
David Day is a Wichita Junior in English and magazine Journalism.
That's entertainment.
MIXED MEDIA
Bu Jack Ohman