4A
Thursday, February 2, 1995
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
THE ISSUE: EMERGENCY-ABSENCE PROPOSAI
Attendance policy not needed
Student Senate has seen fit to meddle in an area where it is not needed.
Senate unanimously supported a formal letter that asks David Shulenburger, vice chancellor for academic affairs, to support the "Student Family Emergency Leave Proposal." The proposal would excuse students from class during family deaths and other crises. Students are already excused for illness and religious holidays.
Faculty at the University of Kansas should decide their own class attendance policies. Some faculty do not require attendance; some faculty do. If students are required to attend class, in almost every case they are allowed to miss a certain number of classes — generally three or four — before the absences adversely affect their grades.
However, Senate's new idea is a poor one and should not be incorporated into practicing standards by University faculty.
Furthermore, it is impossible to believe, as Student Senate would have everyone believe, that there is a large number of faculty members who punish students for missing class because they were attending a family member's funeral or had a
Policy to allow students to miss class for family emergencies interferes with professors' regular absence allowances.
verified emergency that kept them out of school.
At times when students are not excused for the emergency, it is likely a problem of their own making. If a student has exhausted his or her free absences because they were too lazy to get out of bed or were nursing a hangover, then there is little room to complain about not getting excused for the absence.
Students should take responsibility for their class attendance. If they choose to skip class, they should be and are aware of the consequences for missing. At best, these are matters that should be left to students and their instructors.
The student body does not need Student Senate to be apologists for its behavior nor have it concoct ways for students to avoid their responsibility.
Furthermore, a group such as Student Senate, which has problems monitoring attendance at its own meetings, seems hardly qualified to carry the banner for the entire student body.
STEPHEN MARTINO FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
THE ISSUE: TEACHER EVALUATIONS
Evaluations should be open
instructor evaluations at the University of Kansas should be made public and should be accessible to every student. Students too often blindly enroll in a course without any prior knowledge of the instructor's teaching style.
The only means of finding out about an instructor is through word of mouth. This process lacks availability, especially for new and transfer students.
In other words, enrollment often turns into a game of educational roulette.
Since students spend time to evaluate their instructors, they should have the right of access to the evaluations at any time.
By signing their names at the bottom of the evaluations, KU students would permit their evaluations of instructors to become public records. These public records could be accessed
By signing their names to evaluations, students could make them public and be able to review them before enrolling.
from any department by students with a current KUID.
If these evaluations were accessible, students would be able to learn the teaching methods and style of any given instructor based on the comments of former students. This would enable students to choose instructors more suited to their learning capabilities. Students would also be able find out if an instructor had performed poorly in the past.
It is a right that most students feel they are entitled to. Students should be allowed to see an evaluation by their peers of every practicing instructor at this university.
AMY TRAINER FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO
Editor
DENISE NEIL
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
Editors
News...Curtis Telajee
Planning...Mark Martin
Editorial...Matt Gowen
Associate Editorial...Heather Lewenzw
Campus...David Wilson
Colleen McCain
Sports...Gerry Fey
Associate Sports...Ashley Miller
Photo...Jarrett Lane
Features...Nathan Olson
Design...Brian James
Freelance...Busan White
Jeff MacNelly /CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Since our president likes to compare himself to John Kennedy, perhaps he should consider these lines from Robert Frost, who was Kennedy's inaugural poet. "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know? What I was walking in or walking out/And to whom I was like to give offense/Something there is that doesn't love a wall/That wants it down."
Can ethnic homelands for Hispanics be far behind? Or perhaps the wall that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has built along a particular stretch of the Mexico-U.S. border could be extended along the entire border. That strategy worked really well in . . . COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY!
things we criticize in these Mexican immigrants. Californians and others contend that these immigrants make no effort to assimilate into the dominant culture. And yet had those Texans not resisted efforts to assimilate them into Mexican culture, California might still be a province of Mexico.
JENNIFER PERRIER
Business manager
MARK MASTRO
Retail sales manager
CATHERINE ELLSWORTH
Technology coordinator
Business Staff
Campus mgr ... Beth Pole
Regional mgr ... Chris Branaman
National mgr ... Shelly Felviste
Coop mgr ... Kelly Connelys
Special Sections mgr ... Brigit Bloomqulet
Production mgr ... JJ Cook
Kim Hyman
Marketing director ... Minda Blum
Promotions director .. Justin Frosolone
Creative director .. Dan Gler
Classified mgr ... Leea Kuieth
What is one to make of the specifics of President Clinton's immigration policy. In a word, it smacks of totalitarianism. Consider the issue of identification cards. Well, they worked rather well in... SOUTH AFRICA!
Nicolas Shump is a Lawrence senator in comparative literature.
Double standard is not fair to immigrants in America
Given the faith I have in our topnotch headline writers, I'm sure by the time you read these words you will already know that this editorial concerns America's immigration "problem."
My challenge is to present this issue in a new and interesting way that will leave you edified and perhaps even amused. So I have decided to tell you a story. This strategy always seems to work on my 2-year old. (Just don't expect me to give you a good night kiss, OK?)
This story concerns a group of restless immigrants who yearned for a new and better life. So they ask for and receive permission to settle in a new country that borders their own. Of course, in exchange for permission to immigrate, these "aliens" were expected to abide by certain rules. They were expected to follow the laws of the new country; they were expected to follow the customs of the new country, and they were expected to learn the language of the new country. Initially, the new settlers attempted to comply with these regulations, but soon these immigrants began to resent these restrictive policies. After all, they are not citizens of this new country. In fact, they retained a strong sense of national and ethnic pride. However, the citizens of this country resented what they considered to be special treatment given to these new
To make matters worse, the borders were being overrun by more immigrants from the neighboring country. Finally, as a last resort, the country that initially opened its borders to these i m m i g r a n t s attempted to seal its borders to put a stop to this epidemic of unwanted immigration. In addition, the host country refused to grant a request from these immigrants for permanent residency status.
STAFF
COLUMNIST
Does this sound familiar? Well, it may not be as familiar as you think because this is not a story about California in the 1990s. No, this is a story about Mexico in the 1830s and its immigration problem in the territory that later became Texas. Those undesirable immigrants who were pouring across the border were actually Texans who had reneged on their promise to become Catholic, learn Spanish and obey the laws of Mexico, which had by this time outlawed slavery. The Texans refused and today are celebrated as heroes. It's ironic that we celebrate in these Texans the very
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the authors signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columns: Should be double-spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or out-right reject all submissions. For any questions, call Matt Gowen, editorial page editor, or Heather Lawrenz, associate editorial page editor, at 864-4810.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Stop complaining - Robinson isn't so bad
Perhaps only recently has Hizer made the startling discovery that gyms are hot, crowded places with rather spartan decor.
Those of us who work or study at the University of Kansas are very fortunate to have as fine a facility as Robinson right on campus. With two swimming pools, a fitness center, weight room, tennis courts, racquetball courts, gyms, saunas and sports equipment to borrow — all gratis — Robinson is an oasis. It might come as a surprise to Hizer and other Robinson gym-o-phobes that such campus sports facilities
As a fan of Robinson Center, I take issue with Ami Hizer's whining. ("Advisory board proposes new recreation center," Jan. 26 in the Kansan).
Hizer does not speak for me—or for many of my international students, who have only words of praise for Robinson. My advice for Hizer and company ... stop kretching and start stretching!
Nancy Marie Wood
Lecturer, Applied English Center
are not standard equipment at all colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. In Hungary, where I taught for three and a half years, my students at the University of Veszpren were content with their modest on-campus sports facilities — a gym for ball games and aerobics, three clay tennis courts and a very small weight room. Friday afternoons students could take the university bus to a neighboring town to go swimming. The students had no complaints about their austere facilities, perhaps because they had more pressing concerns.
It was a couple of years ago, on my way back from visiting the parental units for Thanksgiving when I saw the sign by the side of the road.
Prejudice still alive; Klan's presence in South shows
Itread: "This rule of highway adopted by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."
STAFF
COLUMNIST
As I passed it, I slowed and looked over my shoulder.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
Nuptse, I was hallucinating. The KKK (whose grand exalted pooh-bah, or whatever you call him, lives in Harrison, Ark., a few miles south of the sign) is alive and well, and a few Saturdays a year its members pick up beer cans and cigarette butts to prove what good citizens they are.
Today the sign is no longer there, but the sentiment certainly is.
None, I wasn't
It took moving away to the comparatively tolerant atmosphere of Lawrence to really illustrate for me that a lot of the folks back home — even a great many who are otherwise good, honest, loving people — are still stuck in an outdated mentality of prejudice and hate.
I never thought of the South as all that racist when I was growing up there.
I checked my odometer, and a mile farther I saw the Adopt-a-Highway sign for people coming from the opposite direction.
I did know it existed, though.
My own parents, especially my father, are prime examples of the kind of people I'm talking about.
I also ran into it at the generally more tolerant University of Arkansas, where I got my undergraduate degree.
I've gotten into countless arguments with him about the language he uses in referring to minorities.
For example, during my junior year I left my sorority after becoming disgusted with the way these "sisters" treated women in the group who sometimes dated men who weren't white.
Almost every time I go back there, I run into yet another person who assumes that because I'm white I'm automatically going to share his views toward minorities.
Once I was having my hair cut there by a woman who'd recently returned from a trip to Dallas.
I asked her if she'd gone to a particular part of that city I'd once visited and enjoyed.
“Oh, I went there for a little while, but I didn't stay long. I was afraid I'd getugged,” she said.
Then she leaned closer to whisper,
"There were just too many niggers
there, if you know what I mean!"
I glared at her and said, "No, I don't"
I'm certain things will change in the South eventually and that it just takes longer there than in the rest of the country.
But the intolerance I see when I go back for visits has left me feeling disenchanted with my roots.
The rest of my haircut took place in uncomfortable silence.
When someone asks me, "Did you go home for Christmas?"
I find myself answering, "No, Lawrence is home. But, I went to Arkansas for Christmas."
Chris Hampton is a Lawrence graduate student in higher education.
MIXED MEDIA
By Jack Ohman