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Wednesday, January 18, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers
Enrollment frustrating
Enrollment in Allen Field House, traditionally criticized as a frustrating hassle, added another monster-like dimension to its image this semester.
After seven years of side-stepping a Kansas Board of Regents calendar policy, the university of Kansas followed the rule that dictates that classes are to begin on Wednesday in the spring semester. Finally, KU's semesters started on a Monday.
To handle enrollment paperwork, administrators necessarily had to start enrollment a full week before classes convened.
THE EARLY ENROLLMENT schedule shortened semester break by a week. Students, who had to learn with two or three early classes, must take extra time to do before classes start.
Some students didn't return in time to enroll. Today, the first day of late enrollment, late enrollees in predictably greater numbers than before will begin voiding class counts taken at enrollment last week and helping match for faculty, staff and administrators.
Abiding by the policy has produced no positive effects for KU, only additional paperwork, more late fee payments and another criticism against KU's enrollment
system.
Abiding by the policy is even harder to bear when there seems to be no logical reason for it.
Relationship, the fall semester holds no threat of an early enrollment because Regents proscribe that fall classes begin on a Monday, not on a Wednesday as in the spring.
THE REGENTS have a right to set a
calendar policy that keeps Regens schools on a common schedule. But when a policy ceases to be a guide and becomes a hardship the school must change it. It is time to either bend or change the rules.
Because KU is the only Regents university that does not have pre-enrollment, it is most affected by the policy. Students at state universities in Emporia, Fort Hays, Manhattan, Pittsburgh and Wichita, who have already pre-enrolled, can abide by the policy by merely reporting back to school today—no shortened break to allow for enrollment, no extra red tape, no change from previous semesters.
Why can't KU's special needs be met by an exemption to the policy?
Or better yet, why aren't KU's computers, which supposedly could handle pre-enrollment, given a try?
The idea of computerized pre-enrollment is not new. After endorsements by past Student Senate committees and administrators, a computer system was ordered and delivered in the summer of 1976. With the new computers came promises that computerized pre-enrollment would be started this semester.
EVIDENCE to the contrary was at hand last week in Allen as students again struggled through another drawn-out, agonizing process of pulling class cards.
Although the woes of enrollment admittedly would not be cured by an exemption from the inconvenience early spring at least they would not be aggravated.
But more tolerance of the system is not enough. KU students deserved computerized enrollment. The computers have sat long enough.
Budget hopes brighten
Restrained optimism is in order at the University of Kansas fiscal year 1979 budget requests. Gov. Robert Bennett's recommendations to the Kansas Legislature, requests totaling $109.2 million, are only $3 million the amount backed by the Board of Regents.
Particularly heartening in Bennett's recent budget message were the restorations he made of items slashed in November by James Bibb, state budget director. The items include the graduate student tree waiver, a 7 percent increase in faculty salaries—as opposed to the 5 percent brought under control, a computer catalogue system at Watson Library. Bennett also supported the full $85,115 the University asked for women's athletics.
Even though Bibb's job forces him to critically examine budget requests, his cut of the Watson money was particularly shortsighted. The library has fallen behind in its ability to keep track of its own materials, an intolerable state of affairs at any institution that prides itself on academic excellence. Moreover, Bennett also recommended $291,200 in supplemental appropriation money to improve Watson's deplorable lack of safety and to more efficiently utilize space at Spencer Library.
THE TOTAL capital improvements
money for Watson, if Bennett is successful in selling the request to the legislature, would be about $6.2 million. In addition, Bennett has already planned money for Watson's futures needs.
The fee waiver proposal, which would be $243,194, was near the $263,024 the University had been asking. The money is vital if KU is to continue to attract high-quality graduate students; low pay for graduate teaching assistants is especially incompatible with the quality of education at the larger Reengents' institutions.
As State Rep. Mike Glover, D-Lawrence, noted, "KU came out just great." Caution, however, seems more appropriate. The budget is likely to become one of the hotest political issues during the current legislative session. The governor seeking re-election, was certainly concerned with providing something for everyone in his over-all recommendations.
University students, faculty and administrators will have to lobby persuasively if Bennett's package is to be approved intact. The Regents have recognized the seriousness and unpredictability of Now it is up to the narrow Democratic majority in the House and the narrow Republican majority in the Senate to approve the recommendations.
High idealism thrives at Kansan
In the heart of the University of Kansas campus thrives a sanctuary of idealism.
The sanctuary is the University Daily Kansan office in Flint Hall, where abstract realism is converted into man hours, sweat and journalistic nuts and bolts to produce the paper you now hold in your hands.
My purpose is not to blow the Kansan's horn or to fill the page with praises, promises and plattitudes. I leave you, our readers, to judge the product.
But at the start of a fresh semester and a new job, when my idealism is at fever pitch, I will expose a little Kansan strategy previously known to you* in
WE SET ourselves up as accurate reporters, provoking commentators and entertaining writers, and, in doing so, have created assignments that predictably fall our way.
Perhaps to keep our sanity, perhaps to keep us reporting for work day after day, the Kansan staff supplies its daily
Barbara Rosewicz
Editor
diet of student and newspaper routine with doses of idealism.
With doses of thalium
We are not naive; we are stubborn.
We are serious and conscientious about our work. We answer to no authority but our own standards.
Such are the rules of our game.
I encourage your judgments, even your criticisms. The Kansan can be more to its readers if readers are more a part of the Kansan.
YOUR REACTIONS are valuable in a letter to the editor, a guest editorial, a phone call or a visit to the Kansan newspaper, or an email. When we then find that the Kansan is reaching readers and not just littering the campus on windy days.
This semester's staff boasts professional as well as Kansas experience. My right-hand man is managing editor Jerry Sass, Rochester graduate student, who has reported on the Oregon Statesman and the Port Huron, Mich., Times-News.
Editorial editor is John Mueller, Winfield senior, who has worked for the Minneapolis, Minn., Tiburon, the Kansas City Star and the Hutchinson News.
CAMPUS EDITOR is Barry Massey, Humboldt senior, who has just returned from a management seminar at the St. Petersburg Times and has reported for the Rochester Times-Union and the Chanute Tribune.
Massey's associate is Kevin Kious, Overland Park senior, who worked over intercession with the Kansas City Times. Assistant campus editors are Deb Miller, Concordia senior, who worked at home at the Concordia Blade-Empire, and Leon Unruth, Pawnee Rock junior, who has reported for the Hays Daily
[OTF] others be the best. David Perry senior and Kansas City Times interession intern; Mary Mitchell, Tupelo, Miss, graduate student and intercession employee at the Northeastern Mississippi Journal; and Sarah Riddell, McPherson senior and Hutchinson News interession intern.
Gary Bedore, Llisl, III., junior, is sports editor. Bedore worked over intercession at the Topeka Daily Capital on the feature *The Grove*, Dove, Graphic-Herald.
News, the Topeka Daily Capital and the Larned Tiller and Toiler.
El Reichman, Leavenworth junior, is photo editor. He has worked at the Topeka Daily Capital and the Leavenworth Times.
Lastly, I am Barbara Rosewicz, spring editor. I come to the Kansasian worked in the newsrooms of the Wichita and Beacon and the Kansas City Times.
Tests could boost high school standards
To people at a university, accustomed to books, signs, lecture notes and other trappings of education, it is almost inconceivable that some people can barely read or write. To legislators, who have to deal with taxation, the problem is difficult to believe that some people cannot conquer a checkbook balance.
And to most of us going through the 16th year of formal schooling, it is alarming to consider that America's high schools are giving diplomas to people who find a daily newspaper impossibly tough to get through.
Disconcerting statistics show that the level of educational competency in Kansas and the country is declining. The ACT and SAT high-school standings are decreasing trend nationally. Tests administered five years ago to eighth-grade Kansas students—whose graduated from high school last year—indicated that 11,000 lagged in reading achievement by at least one gradelevel.
THE REQUIREMENTS for the University of Kansas' highest academic awards, the Summerfield and Watkins-Berger Scholarships, have been relaxed this year. In past years, incoming freshmen had to be admitted to Merit Scholarship program to be candidates; this year's need not be.
The United States has begun
to show concern about the lack of skills shown by some of its youth. Thirty states have taken steps toward programs that require a graduating high-school student to show expertise in those skills.
Kansas is one of those states. Three hills to introduce competency-based education are now before the legislature. Each hill has a group given to all high-school students before graduation, to measure their proficiency in reading, writing and computation skills. The test to measure the ability would not receive a diploma signifying graduation. Instead, he would get a "certificate of attendance"—a red flag to future employers wanting someone with a minimum competency level.
THE PROGRAMS proposed for Kansas are modeled on the country's first full-scale competency-based program, begun last year in Florida. Florida's seniors pass a functional literacy test to receive full diplomas.
Last fall Florida officials found that many of their student-athletes read or figure very well. The juniors took the new
tests, pegged to the eight-grade level, and 40 percent failed. Could the same large number of failures turn up in
"I fully expect it to happen," the sponsors of two of the Kansas bills both said in separate interviews. State Rep. Keith Farrar, R-Hugoton, has a bill before the House requiring testing on three levels, including college graduation. State Sen. Charlie Angell, R-Plains, is co-sponsor of a similar bill requiring testing at grades six, nine and twelve. Both agree that the
decline in Kansas education must be reversed.
The proposed programs have drawn support and criticism. An administrators' group met with the Education last week to urge it to lobby for the passage of a competency-based program. Gov. Robert Bennett also has spoken out against competency-based program.
SOME FEAR that the new standards and tests would not be fair. But in Kansas, Angell said, the Board of Education and local school boards would set the standards. He added
that the tests would be screened to prevent any possible bias.
And students who missed the tests would not be cast out and forbidden. The proposed bills all contain provisions for using it, which are designed to help bring deficient students up to the acceptable level.
When KU first opened in 1866, none of its first students was eligible for the curriculum without "preparatory," or remedial courses. The institution measured can ensure that the high schools do their job, and that one of KU's first problems will not reoccur.
State legislators don't need steep raises
Kansas now has "a part-time citizen legislature." warns Foster. He says he's concerned
State HPA, Ben Foster, R-Witcha, has been using his Derby radio station as a soapbox for an idea that ought to be made public. He brought holiday cheer into the ears of south-central Kansas listeners by urging, in gravely broadcast editors, that state legislatures receive a raise—8,800 a year to $15,000 a year.
that the House and Senate have "too many law students, retired persons and politicians." A 70 percent salary boost presumably would attract legislators more to Foster's liking.
Ignoring for a moment whether a legislator is, by definition, a politician, Foster's
contentions are easily refuted by a quick check with the latest legislative directory. Just eight persons out of 165 legislators are law students, retired persons or politicians.
viously has no monopoly on self- aggrandizement.
But 60 percent, although a majority, is hardly an overwhelming endorsement of gun go on? Not much. He thinks that "not enough of the state's most productive citizens—those who make house payments, pay taxes or bills" can run for the legislature.
BY CHARLESS S. STEINBERG N.Y. Times Features
Ethics are lost in academic rat race
Having spent five years in the lofty academic post of full professor at a prestigious university, I can't puzzle out why my former colleagues in industry look with envy on my new affiliation. Most of them applaud me, but some from a lucrative executive position, and they wish that they had the guts to abandon the rat race for the tranquil groves of academe. I assure them that their idea of a university bears little resemblance to the reality of academe: they will find tranquility in academe is a gross canard.
Pay no heed to those stories of backbiting on Madison Avenue. They are a mild broth compared to the witches' brew that was used up in the deceptively mild environment of the campus.
Academe, in short, can be a jungle—more terrifying than the real jungle, where predators fall out of the academe and people of academic people on the make have an instinct for the jugular that is driven by a deadly combination of ruthless ambition and sheer, malevolent, sadistic pleasure. The detestable need to be or reputation consumes an extraordinary amount of time and energy that might best
Of almost equal importance with publication is membership on one of the proliferating committees. There is a committee to coordinate its accessibility. Although they accomplish little, they serve several useful purposes. They provide an opportunity for service that is necessary for advancement. They satisfy power-hungry users. Above all, they deal with circumventing problems for indefinite periods during which decisions are avoided.
may well prefer making money to serve the state or advancing their professional careers through the prestige of working in Topeka. But it is equally true that making the legislature full-time, which Foster asserts might "get rid of some dead wood," also would have the chilling effect on its members' occupations. Farmers, for example, would be unavailable for the part-time lawmaking that is currently open to them.
THIS UNMITIGATED savagery is accompanied by a climate of fear that, if not neurotically self-generated, the unrelenting pressure to complete a Ph.D. and to publish within a defined time limit. There is the reiterated admonition that failure to accomplish both job will resilient in loss of job.
be used by minding one's own affairs or (horrible thought) serving the students.
Never mind that the victim may be a dedicated teacher. Without tenure there is no security, and the irrevocable rule is "up or out." To avoid this holocaust, publish an article but include reprints, one can reproduce reprints, one can conceivably be home free.
particular target of professors who operate behind the sanctuary of permanent tenure; the administration is autocratic when it confronts an issue, and disillusionous when it does not.
STRANGELY ENOUGH, for five years I have heard little talk of students' needs. Teaching and learning are rarely mentioned. Instead, the burning issue usually involves political action against the misfease—real or imagined—of the administration. The administration is the enemy and the
Indeed, no business corporation can boast of executive authority remotely comparable to the artisan or professor. The tenured professor. As a result, many of my sacrosanct colleagues are utterly contemptuous with students and automatic with students and tend to spend much of their time
As a full, tenured professor, I am considered fortunate in being immune to these pressures.
C. P. Snow once called the academic world a community of "strangers and brothers." That actually is a better description of the faculty. Despite the jockeying for position, despite the uncanny ability of some to succeed without really trying, the corporate organization men have a sense of loyalty and obligation that reveals an instinct for curiosity to backtrack to discover that in the academy, ethics and obligations are just that—academic.
In the desperate need to publish or perish, in the savage struggle for tenure, there is a lethal combination of ambition and frustration that allows strchanges the students and demeans the idea of what a university should represent. That is why I urge my former colleagues to stay put in the press. The grass is not greener in academia, and the ivy can be very poisonous.
on their own pet projects or as outside consultants.
Charles S. Steinberg, who holds a doctorate in communications and who was a vice president of CBS-TV from 1956 to 1972, is professor of communications at the University of the City of New York.
Noting that the surveyed legislators said they spent 40 percent of their available working time on legislative duties, Foster concedes that the present salary "doesn't sound too bad." But he adds, "The problem is, the average individual week can cost five days a week can't accept this kind of a part-time arrangement. Neither can busy professionals."
A broader question raised by Foster's proposal is why the quality of legislative decision-making in any way rise if it were changed to a year-round basis. Last year, legislators consumed precious time debating such important bills as the Constitution should be. Perhaps legislators need to be more serious about their priorities, rather than whining for heftier salaries.
IT IS ENTIRELY possible that a few "busy professionals"
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