07
OPINION
Coming Monday, November 26...
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN WWW.KANSAN.COM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20. 2007 PAGE 7A
Guest: Uncertainty about the war in Iraq prompts concern about a draft in the future.
ANARCHY IN THE U.K.
PAGE 7A
GUEST COLUMN
Please answer in the form of a question
'Jeopardy' audition celebrates the benefits of knowing a lot of useless information
KELSEY HAYES
The first thing I want to know is where you got that darling sweater."
I'm standing in front of three seated "Jeopardy" employees, undergoing the final leg of today's audition process—the interview. We've just finished a simulated game, complete with the hand-held clickers. We frantically pumped our thumbs on the clickers like we were playing "Halo" after drinking a gallon of Red Bull.
I answer the question the woman asked—American Eagle, it was a Christmas present. Now I have to say a little about myself. Well, I'm a junior at KU and I spent nine months in England last year and I'm doing my thesis on Britain and the European Union.
This is the audition for the "College Jeopardy" tournament. The winner receives not only unrivalged geckal credentials, but also $100,000. The most I've ever won in a trivia competition was £10 in Reading, England, which was immediately recycled into a pitcher and a bowl of chips. $100,000 would buy a lot of pitchers and a lot of chips.
I took an online test in September, didn't think much on it and received an e-mail in October inviting me to Chicago for the second leg of tryouts.
20 students, including me, were herded into a ballroom of the Westin Hotel on Michigan Avenue. We represented a pretty broad swath of Midwestern schools. Almost half the students were from the University of Michigan, which floored me, considering that they had to miss their school getting beat by Ohio State in that yawner of a Big Ten championship.
Our handlers, the three aforementioned employees, explained the process to us. We'd be given a written quiz, get into groups of three and play the actual game and finally be interviewed. They also told us our approximate chances for actually getting on the show. It all comes down to luck.
The personal interviews were the most interesting part. One girl stood up and broke out into opera. A guy from the University of Georgia said he read geology articles for fun. Another guy built solar-powered cars for competitions and had raced them in Australia. I said I was the opinion editor on my college paper, which I thought was pretty much awesome.
Everyone had their own little quirks, odd majors and experiences. I couldn't help but imagine Alex Trebek speaking to each of us on the show.
"Jane, it says here that you're a state champion in beer pong. Would you like to tell us a little more about that?"
"Well, Alex..."
Eventually, the "Jeopardy" people asked the lynch pin question.
"What would you do with the money if you won?"
Most people, including me, said that they'd spend the money on graduate school and travel. Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy were the travel destinations of choice, which made me feel a little smug since I'd been to all of them. A baseball fan said he wanted to travel across the country and see games at every stadium. I kept waiting for someone to say something like, "I'm takin' this to Vegas!" The closest anyone came to that was the guy from Georgia who said he'd invest some of it.
After the written quiz, the game play and the interviews, we were sent on our way with a cheerful, "Good luck!"
I left the Westin feeling reasonably optimistic. I'd met some interesting people and had fun answering questions and talking about myself and my sweater. If I get lucky, I'll be in Wisconsin in a few months wearing my KU sweatshirt. I always get tired of people from Harvard, Stanford and Princeton dominating "College Jeopardy," and want to score one for all the people who proudly go to the State U. For now, there's nothing left to do but wait.
Wait, and call out the answers while I watch at home.
Hayes is a Lenexa junior in journalism, political science and international studies. She is Kansan opinion editor.
FREE FOR ALL: 864-0500 OR KANSAN.COM/FACEBOOK
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
Is it sad that the quality of my day is directly affected by whether or not I make it into Free for ALL?
everything.
Free for All, you must not love me anymore.
Yay for writing chemistry papers at 6 a.m.!
Turkey Day is coming! bring on the sweatpants and full tummies!
Blackwater abuses authority in Iraq
The private militia is not subjected to the same laws as American soldiers
TREVAN MCGEE
On Sept. 16 an armed convoy of six U.S. State Department SUVs came under fire in the Mansour district of Baghdad in a crowded market square. The SUVs, driven by Blackwater private security operatives, stopped. Operatives evacuated the vehicles and returned fire. Helicopters escorting the convoy gave aid. When the shooting stopped, somewhere between11 and 23 Iraqi civilians were dead.
For many people around the world, this was the first exposure to Blackwater, a private security company with roughly 1,000 tactical operatives currently in Iraq—none of which are held legally accountable to a specific entity, be it the United States or Iraqi governments or the United Nations. For the Iraqi people, however, Blackwater has been a constant reminder of occupation since the beginning of U.S. involvement in their country.
There's a girl. She's changed
Operatives have aggressively forced military convoys through crowded neighborhoods and marketplaces and fired on cars they considered too close. The
Iraiq government accused Blackwater operatives of aiding in the jailbreak of Ahyam
Al Samari, a man who embezzled $2.2 billion meant to restore Iraq's archaic power grid. Another group of operatives are under FBI investigation for allegedly smuggling weapons into Iraq and then selling them to the Kurdistan Workers Party, a known terrorist organization.
While Congress voted in favor of including private security companies in the Military Extraterritorial Act, investigations take time and do not provide immediate accountability to, or curb, violence. In lieu of the Sept. 16 incident the Iraq government has moved to revoke private security contractors' immunity, bu at the same time, Iraq's government is in no position to enforce its own laws. Blackwater operatives are essentially above the law.
As a private company, Blackwater has more than 21,000 operatives in its database and 90 percent of its largely unknown profits come from government contracts. Operatives serve as security guards, convoy escorts and assassins and while the company currently works exclusively for the government,
While American's cringe at the idea of a draft and wince at casualty reports, leaving Iraq in full would guarantee its implosion into further sectarian violence, interference from Iran and Syria and make the country an even more fertile breeding ground for international terrorism and anti-American sentiment.
corporate hiring and privatized intelligence are the next steps in the Blackwater business model.
Ironically, it was the brutal murder of four Blackwater operatives in Fallujah and the military's subsequent monthlong assault on the city that effectively lost "the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people and emboldened Mutada Al Sadr to call for the first Shilite uprising.
accountability monitoring to an independent organization as well.
Because so much of the War on Terror has been outsourced already, we should outsource
The State Department has already announced that its officials will accompany Blackwater operatives on their convvoys in Iraq. The department will also install security cameras in Blackwater vehicles and will keep recordings of Blackwater radio transmissions.
Amnesty International is the best candidate for this job. The organization has already been monitoring the activities of Blackwater and other private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it has experience. The organization could prepare monthly assessments of security contractor conduct, report directly to the State Department and publish the findings as public record.
Amnesty International could also ensure that future contracts between the State Department and private contractors contained sections on human rights, something previous contracts lacked. Of course, in order for this to work certain aspects of private security cannot remain private. While companies like Blackwater may be perfect candidates for the kind of warfare in which the line between civilians and enemy combatants is often blurry or nonexistent, they still have to answer to someone.
Mcee is a Bucklin senior in journalism and theater and film. He is Kansan copy chief.
DRAWING BOARD
Missouri T-shirt designer explains his position
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
MAX RINKE
am the initial maker of the "scoreboard" Law
Frence burning shirt you reference in one of your articles. I would like to explain that I certainly recognize that slavery was an issue at the time and absolutely do not support prejudice or injustice toward African-Americans or any other group, and the shirts were in no way meant to connote that. On the contrary, I have very good African-American friends and have for many years gotten offended by KU fans calling Missourians 'slavers' and their team wearing 'redlegs' for their games with Mizzou.
the image on the shirt really need to investigate the origins of the term jayhawk, and they will find that things like town burning, citizens being murdered, lawlessness and looting are all things that 'jayhawkers' also did during that era. Wikipedia notes that jayhawker bands committed some of the most notorious atrocities of the Civil War, including the massacre at Osceola, Mo., in which the entire town was set afame and at least nine of the male residents killed, and that items stolen in raids into Missouri were frequently referred to as having been "jayhawked." Is the supposed cause of abolition really justification for a university to celebrate murder, stealing and lawlessness? What sort of example did those jayhawkers set for the persons whose freedom they supposedly fought for? Perhaps
The point of the shirt was as an informal protest against the University of Kansas's continued use of the "Jayhawk" as its athletic logo and mascot. Any KU grads or students upset about
the free black who rode alongside Quantrill during the raid on Lawrence did so because he disapproved of those acts by jay-hawkers?
Moreover, KU forcing civil rights issues to the forefront by using terms like 'jayhawk' is inappropriate because Kansas' own civil rights record is far from praiseworthy. After emancipation Kansas as a state continued to allow for segregation in its schools and elsewhere. It took the Brown v. Board of Education decision, whereby the U.S. Supreme Court forced Kansas to finally overturn its own statewide adopted segregation laws, for there to actually begin to be true equality in Kansas—and Brown v. Board was well after most all northern states had already voluntarily desegregated. I don't understand why, if Kansas' proud 'jayhawkers' were so intent on fighting for a people's freedom, the state of Kansas would turn right around and subjugate those people even at a time in the 1950s when many other states didn't. It's hypocritical in my opinion to evoke the 'jayhawk' and 'redlegs' as university symbols while ignoring Kansas' own skeletons in the closet as far as race. That said, if the University of Kansas acknowledges these points and agrees that its mascot can be seen as offensive and an inappropriate symbol to use. I will then do what I am sure many Kansans would like to see happen to these shirts: I will burn them.
Sincerely,
Jeff James
University of Missouri graduate
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For any questions, call Kelsey Hayes or Bryan Dykman at 864-4810 or e-mail opinion@kansas.com.
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to the editor at editor@kansan.com.
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The Editorial Board
Erick R. Schmidt, Eric Jorgensen,
Darla Slipe, Kelsey Hayes, Bryan
Dykman, Brandon T. Minister, Angelique
McNaughton and Benjamin R. Smith