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Wednesday, January 28, 1976
University Dally Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Atmosphere destroyed
Change, contrary to a widely held opinion, doesn't always mark progress. And the recent interior decorating in the basement of Strong Hall is proof.
The basement of Strong was always a favorite place of mine—one where I could go to get a Coke or snack without waiting in line or filing into some cramped enclosure. I liked the rather hectic atmosphere and cluttered appearance. It was a place designed for, or may be engendered by, the student and office worker. Commuting students and others studied at the long rows of tables set up against the length of the south wall.
whisked away so the area could be cleaned and sterilized. Some of the machines are now in a small room that has been set up for a Great Credit Union. Few tables remain.
Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, explained the change in this way. "Since some visitors to the University use that back door in the basement it's become the front door to a lot of people."—a lot of people such as legislators, alumni and others visiting the Chancellor's complex.
Apparently this appearance takes a bit longer to maturity than student wants or convenience.
By Betty Haegelin Associate Editor
Computer enrollment: pro and con
Computers misunderstood
Computerized pre-enrollment at the University of Kansas has a definite image problem.
Once the departments had reviewed the pre-enrollment figures and added or deleted any sections, a second and final computer program would be run. Between the spring and summer sessions, the final schedules would be
For some reason, many students have the impression that preenrolment would mean that some great computer maintenance man in the sky would issue them a schedule filled with classes at either 7:30 a.m. or 4:30 p.m.—even on Saturday morning, God forbid! Apparently this belief was held by many Manhattan institutions where students have little or no choice of professors or times. But the system at KU would not, and probably will not, work that way.
A system that KU could end up with after the bids are let go something like this. Sometimes in the spring semester, the timetables for the fall schedule of classes would be distributed to all students, but some classes on computerized scan sheets. These sheets would be fed into KU's computer and a preliminary count would be made on how many people enrolled for each class, and how many people got closed out of a class. This data was then given to the departments so additional sections of popular classes could be opened.
sent to students and if they were lucky and got all their classes, that would be it. If they were closed out of a class, there would be a special time—probably one week before classes started—when students could go to the Registrar's office and add another class also by computer.
All of the other enrollment hassles, such as the little party over in Hoch Andorlorum, the fee payment hues and ties, and the need for computer or care of computer. Students might even be able to pay fees by mail after they received their revised schedules. Drop-add, the bugaboo of many a student, is the place of care by computer in the Registrar's office. And those unlucky people who don't have the right last name or friends who work at enrollment would never face the chance of getting the classes they want.
I realize that there are a few masochists among us who have a great sense of humor and the general maze that I have known as enrollment for the past four years. There are times when even the best of them lose their way, in automation, and this is one of them.
Who knows? If computer whiz kids can program the machines to play chess and run countries, they might even be able to design one that would give logical advice to students and get them out of school in four years.
By Betty Haegelin Associate Editor
For years now, there has been a belief among some University of Kansas students that computerized enrollment will come some day and save us all. According to this belief, the computers will come and all the lines and hassles and swarming through Allen Field House will disappear.
But if computerized enrollment comes, students may find out they were as wrong as the people who thought KU would never be Oklahoma at football.
True, computerized enrollment would be a good thing in many ways. It would reduce the number of students closed out of classes and would allow classes to start earlier in January, thus helping students prepare to make the hiring of teachers and the scheduling of classes much easier for the administration.
It wouldn't eliminate lines, however.
Boxes still must be checked at Hoch
Cars still must be registered. Fees still
must be paid.
It wouldn't eliminate advisers, either.
It would, possibly, eliminate country club week. Although this might improve some students' physical state, it could also lead to a period of much needed adjustment.
New hassles would soon arise to replace the ones killed by the computer. Buying health insurance, for example, can mean a separate cross-campus journey.
the worst new hasebe would be the computer itself. Under the present system, human beings handle the computer. If students have at least a 50-60 chance. Human beings can be pled to and, if worse comes to worst, threatened. Sometimes they are old friends. Even if you get hurt, you can try to reason with them.
Under the present system, a student has some choice as to whether he wants to take a class at 7:30 a.m. or 4:30 p.m. Under the computer system, he might
Under the present system, a student knows right away whether he has been closed out. Under the computer system, he wouldn't know for weeks.
Computers have helped to solve many engineering and medical problems, so they can be all bad. They also help some people gather huge files of personal information about other people, so they can't be all good.
The administration thinks compre-
sure it will work on everybody concerned. But it will take only one unproductive tussle with a "special" line or window to dirty the
Allen Field House in August is not and time consuming but it is also human. A clever and persistent person can beat a computer for with a computer is a short circuit.
Readers Respond
Contributing Writer
By Jim Bates
Free campus bus rides could help the system
To the Editor:
The KU Student Senate almost owes the student community free bus service during enrollment. Because every student chips in $1.50 every semester out of his tuition fee, whether he rides the bus or not, this would seem an appropriate goodwill gesture. It would also allow students to easily familiarize their help with to determine their needs of it. It would facilitate a greater ease in enrolment by allowing students to easy move from Hoch and Strong to their advisers and the Field House and also simplify the almost all passes could be sold at enrolment and fees compiled together.
AS A DRIVER for the system, it would allow me more total
and efficient control of the bus by not having my attention diverted by selling passes and collecting checks and money and making change and writing down names, I.D. numbers and bus-pass numbers; let alone the fact that we drivers are required to handling the $200 to $400 worth of passes each day although the responsibility for these passes and money is ours entirely.
The amount of 20-cent fares that would be lost in these three days of free enrollment bus service couldn't amount to more than a couple of hundred dollars, which might even be offset by increased pass buy fees. The service it would provide would surely be worth it anyway.
Kirk Fast
1105 Louisiana
Ford on crime: lock'em up
WASHINGTON - In his State of the Union message last week, President Ford devolved only a few paragraphs to the unyielding problem of crime in the United States.
Because other parts of the speech had more pizzazz,
Serious crime increased 18 per cent from 1973 to 1974. The increase in such crimes in 1973 to 10.2 million in 1974. The increase was bad enough in major cities in urban areas and in suburbs and rural
By James J.
Kilpatrick
(C) Washington State Syndicate
Ford's comments on crime received little notice. They are worthy of your thought.
Ford hammered anew at the same hard themes he developed last summer in a special talk given a made little response in its first session. If the ideal of domestic tranquility is to be taken seriously, Congress owed it to make some response now.
Here and there, it is true, the situation improves, but the improvement is only here and there.
It is a poor kind of improvement; the rate of increase declines. That is the best that can be said.
The most recent crime figures we have are for 1974, and those are incomplete. From that date, the most serious crime never is reported to the police or to the FBI. The figures long ago ceased to be recorded; so crime statistics—but they cry out for legislative action.
The pattern is sickening. Since 1969, the number of person injured by fire grew by one percent. Of those arrested in 1974 for violent crime, 10 per cent were girls and 20 per cent were girls of 17 or younger.
areas was still worse: up 20 per cent.
Enough. Our country is plagued by crime, infested with crime and in some neighborhoods terrorized by crime.
Crime is overwhelming the states and localities, and they have dealt with it poorly. Ford's recommendations necessarily deal with federal offences and penalties, but his tough approach should provide a model for all jurisdictions.
The President starts with the grim truth: most crime goes unpunished. Fewer than half the crimes of violence, and only 18 per cent of the crimes against property, lead to arrests.
who are arrested seldom are tried or convicted on the charges originally brought by the prosecution guilty seldom stay behind bars for long. At every point the law is watered down; plea earlier, probation, early parole and suspended sentences.
The machinery of justice is inadequate to cope with the volume of crime. Ford recommends more judges, more prosecutors, more marshals. He proposes four new federal prisons. Last week he proposed a bill that sends prison sentences for certain offences. This is an idea whose time most surely has come.
The President asks for
mandatory sentences in federal cases involving the use of a gun. He asks for a punishment that couldn't be bargained away in some cozy little meeting of the defendant's lawyer, the prosecutor and the judge. He wants mandatory sentences for dealers in hard drugs. Where these criminals are bound, he asks to off the kidgloves. Lock 'em up! His intention is to get the repeaters off the streets, and to keep them off the streets.
The merits of incarceration seldom are sufficiently acclaimed. Most serious crime is the work of criminals who have been jailed twice or twice before. They are cold-blooded professionals, and are
The Ford program, extended to the states, would require major outlays to expand the machinery of justice. State legislators, pressed from every quarter, may be reluctant to provide the courtrooms, judges, lawyers, and others that will be needed if the incidence of crime is to be reduced.
However, the president's approach is basically sound. It ought to be pursued.
virtually beyond redemption. In all but a tiny fraction of such cases, efforts at rehabilitation are a waste of time and money. Law-abiding people have a right to demand that these vicious misfits be put away until time turns them into old men.
`THAT'S MY PLAN IN A NUTSHELL AND IT'S NOT NUTTY!`
-- A RONNIE REAGAN SPEECH
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