4A
Thursday, October 27,1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
City violence needs more than just a headline
MATT GOWEN
By investing money and time in our cities and schools,we can teach kids the language of hope.
We are conditioned by pop culture, television and the rest of the media to assume our big urban areas are brutal, bloody war zones. Another day, another grisly death.
You would think the words "America" and "violence" were synonyms.
Kids are becoming fluent in the language of violence and death.
And in our nation's big cities — New York, Atlanta, and most recently Chicago — children like Eric Morris, 5, and Robert "Yummy" Sandifer, 11, are dying for reasons as ridiculous as a refusal to steal candy.
Then why does it seem as if we are hearing nothing but yawns as we scan the morning headlines? Maybe we haven't been listening close enough.
If we stop treating senseless violence as the rule, rather than the exception, maybe we'll be less cynical about helping. Even Josef Stalin — not exactly renowned for his kindness — once said, "One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic."
These episodes of horror come at us at a relentless pace, leaving us jaded and feeling helpless. Should we believe the guy on the corner with a sign hanging from his neck, predicting that "the end is near?" Is the other shoe about to drop? Not hardly.
After all, these are cities where we, as students, will work some day in business, counseling, architecture or whatever. And it may surprise you, but with the right solutions, the violence can be stopped. How? Not the crime bill. It deals with assault-style weapons, but most mayors and police chiefs say the cops it promises will never materialize and that adding money for prisons and strengthening the death penalty approaches the problem from the wrong direction.
I've got an idea, and it's not exactly original: rebuild our cities, help our children stay in school and reintegrate our society. How. you ask?
Michael R. White, mayor of Cleveland since 1989, knows. He has pushed for Cleveland to spend $32 million on the downtown, $350 million on neighborhoods and $1 billion in the next five years on the city's center. He's practical and forthright.
("Our citizens) were hungry, their kids were stupid, their streets were falling apart. I changed that," White said in a recent interview with Parade Magazine.
Alex Kotlowitz knows, too. The former Wall Street Journal reporter spent two years in Chicago's public housing complexes. The poverty and hypervigilance about violence is sapping young spirits and leading them away from school, he told USA Weekend. Society needs to counsel these children like they do in the suburbs.
And when the tide turns to crime, we need to stress rehabilitation more than retribution. Locking kids up does not solve anything. These children, he found, usually like to be in
school. So let's try and keep them there.
We also desperately need to reintegrate, economically and culturally. How? Create jobs, which make up the social fabric. How? Reinvest in cities, as mayor White has done. If all else fails, there are places like the Inner City Survivors Safe House in Kansas City, Mo., started by Rantford Fleming. He knows that a safe house helps youths recover, find work and study for exams. It's sponsored by area churches. There is hope in this plight.
But don't ask me. Ask them. They know. And you should too.
Matt Gowen is a Lawrence senior In newspaper Journalism.
VIEWPOINT
Understanding of statistics would increase their value
Recent survey data concerning American sexual practices and the safety of tap water in Midwestern cities has sparked controversy over the validity of statistical information. But rather than categorically rejecting the value of statistics and
agree that there are problems throughout the survey process with achieving a random sample, getting truthful answers from subjects and proper-
MATTER OF STATISTICS
Consumers and users of statistics should
make an effort to understand the implications of the information.
adopting Mark Twain's view, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics," one should realize the worth of statistics as well as the pitfalls in their gathering and interpretation.
Critics of the recent survey of American sexual practices, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, argue that the information gathered through face-to-face interviews may be inaccurate because subjects may not answer truthfully. On the other hand, critics of the report on tap water in the Midwest argue that those who conducted the survey overemphasized the impact of pesticides and herbicides in water and that the amount present is much too small to cause the health problems they claim. Critics of both in some sense are correct. Furthermore researchers themselves
ly analyzing the data.
With this in mind, those who conduct surveys, as well as those who report the results of
such surveys, and the general public should be aware of statistics to better understand what public opinion polls do and do not tell. Because surveys public opinion polls and statistics are used by government agencies to gage the worth of one policy or another and statistics are used by academians in a variety of disciplines and are quoted in newspaper articles, understanding statistics is crucial in everyday life. Therefore courses in statistics should be strongly encouraged.
A greater knowledge of statistics, along with double-checking the survey by finding out who conducted the survey, the questions posed in the survey and whether these questions accurately measured the variables the researcher claims they do, will help the public better understand an appreciate the value of statistics.
MICHAEL PAUL FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
KANSAN STAFF
STEPHEN MARTINO Editor
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Editors
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Jeff MacNelly / Chicago Tribune
If life says something, try to stop and listen
Have you ever thought that life was trying to tell you something?
Well, after this weekend, I am positive that some kind of message is being sent to me. I am just not certain what it is..yet.
It was Friday, and my roommate, Marianne, and I were going home for the weekend. We had our laundry packed, and we were ready to leave. After our routine argument about what time our flight would leave (4:45 p.m. or 4:55 p.m. in this case) and my customary defeat, we decided to leave for the airport for our 4:55 p.m. flight. But as 3:30 p.m. rolled around we were detained.
On our way out the door the neighbors stopped by, and we felt compelled to talk. Then the phone rang. It was our roommate, Amanda, calling to ask us to wait for her to get home before we left so that she could say goodbye. How could we save no?
COLUMNIST
It was now 4 p.m. and, despite the fact that Audra has a tendency to drive with the flair of Mario Andretti, we were a little worried.
After she got home and goodbyes were said, we piled into the car. It was then that Audra, another roommate and our ride, remembered that she needed to get gas.
KATHY KIPP
When we finally got to the airport, we ran to check in our baggage. The woman checking bags and tickets looked at the time of departure and told us that we better sprit. We did, and we made it. It wasn't until we got on the plane that we started to laugh.
It was Sunday, and Mariane and I were flying back to Kansas. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 1:05 p.m., and Mariane told me she would pick me up at noon.
We didn't get worried until we got to Midway Airport.
The traffic surrounding the terminals was unbelievable, and we decided to walk the rest of the way. After searching with no luck for someone outside the terminal at a temporary
baggage check, we were forced to join the long line at the baggage check inside the terminal.
At 12:55 p.m., we got to the counter, and the lady told us that she couldn't guarantee that our luggage or that we would make it on the flight.
As she slapped late check-in tags on our bags, we sprinted towards the gate. This time the news was not as good. We were told that ten minutes before the plane is scheduled for departure, all unclaimed seats are canceled. They said they would be happy to put us on priority standby for the next flight.
Great. Two hours in an airport. What more could we ask for?
And so, I sat there, waiting for a flight that we might not actually get and thinking about many things, specifically about how you can't tempt fate twice. We were ecstatic when we found out we would be on the 3:15 p.m. flight, and it wasn't until we got to the Kansas City International Airport that I really thought life was trying to tell me something.
My huggage had made it on the 1:05
p.m. flight. I didn't.
Kathy Kipp is a Woodridge, Ill, junior in English.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Not all Wildcat fans condone vandalism
There are a great many K-State fans who did not want to see the goal post pulled down in Memorial Stadium. Sometimes some of the K-Student students act like a bunch of no-class sadistic animals when they celebrate a victory.
Sure, some K-State students put purple dye in your fountain and spray painted slogans in purple around the Kansas Union. Over the years, some K-State students also painted your statues, sidewalks and stadium. But some KU students also have committed their belligent acts in Manhattan. In 1974 there were slogans painted in blue on the Ahearn Fieldhouse wall and sidewalks. They have also stolen our live wildcat out of the Sunset Zoo. This is an arch rivalry.
I am NOT going to deplore the entire KU student body because some of you threw candy bars at our football team. You will NOT deplore the entire K-State student body because some of them took down your goal post.
Robert Lipson Manhattan, KS
Good education not 'top-down'
Mr. Hamby lauds the takeover of the Hartford, Conn. school district by a private company.
I am writing in reference to your editorial by Lance Hamby published in "viewpoint" on Thursday, October 13, 1994.
A brief review of the history of schooling in the United States will reveal that our current system is the direct product of the industrial revolution. Businesses wanted employees who would work for hours on assembly lines, doing repetitive tasks to precision. Schools were based on standardization of teachers, of textbooks and of management, so they could produce a standardized "product": a worker who would follow management dictates without question.
But the world isn't like that anymore. Business complains today that the schools are producing people who can't think critically, problem solve, or work collaboratively.
How can we possibly continue to treat our youth as "products" rolling off the educational assembly line, mostly unfit for the diversity of employment and social skills required in today's technological, constantly changing society?
The "lesson" presented in your article is a dangerous one with the lives of our future generation at stake. It's time we took responsibility for the so-called "crisis" in education and realize that the crisis exists in our ignorance of the assumptions we accept as valid when it comes to education.
Barbara Gueser Doctoral student, Special Education
HUBIE
By Greg Hardin