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Monday, December 12, 1977
University Dallv Kansan
Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Some University of Kansas students apparently are being forced to abide by classroom rules made by professors who are ignoring the University's rules.
University administrators began receiving complaints last week that professors were scheduling final examinations in violation of university Senate policy that clearly states:
"The final examination for a course must be given at the regularly scheduled time. No final examination shall be given on the last scheduled day of classes or six days prior to the last day of regularly scheduled classes. Exams should be scheduled during those same days unless a comprehensive final examination is also required in the course."
TRUE, THIS IS the first semester the policy has been in effect. But both the policy's implementation and the process for receiving exemptions have been well publicized.
Even with the policy supposedly in effect, though, professors who want to avoid the same sort of finals time-pressures their students are in continue to schedule final exams early.
The reason for the policy is simple. Without it, students caught in the crush of semester-projects and papers face the possible failure of final exams before classes are over.
Students have every right to expect that their professors will follow this policy—first, because it is a fair policy and second, because professors who set classroom deadlines and requirements are duty-bound to follow rules intended to help students.
A SEMESTER is not over after the last day of classes. The final exam period was established for a purpose; it should be used for that purpose.
Professors who schedule finals early undoubtedly will argue that students, too, want to finish their semester's work as early as possible. The reasonable compromise is for professors who hold early finals to also make it possible for students to take the final exam during the regularly scheduled period—at no penalty to the student.
At the least, students should hope that professors will, in future semesters, follow a University policy that helps students and professors learn more than to make professors fulfill their duties.
Ready or not, here comes Christmas. And, as usual, I'm unprepared.
Christmas sends a calling card
The sure giveaway that the holiday season is coming isn't the lights and decorations in your kitchen or the merchandise in the stores. These go up around Thanksgiving, and I always find them easy to resist as crassly commercial come
But the sign that sounds a note of panic in my procrastinating soul is the arrival of the first Christmas tree. When I tell me that someone, some good-spirited, non-commercial friend or relative, is planning and preparing for the holiday season—while I'm still recovering from Halloween.
And the first card arrived this week.
I wasn't home when the mail came, so I didn't get the chance to tell the letter carrier to hold my mail until I was ready. When I got home, Postal Service seems to have an affinity for people who give their cards in the mail as quickly as possible. It's not likely they be too supportive of someone who'd prefer to receive the cards delivered at once, as close as possible to Dec. 25.
NOW THAT the first card has come, there'll be more.
That's always the way of it.
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
They arrive one at a time, at first—then by the handl. It's very intimidating, especially to someone who hasn't quite got around to making out a list
Over the past week,
newspapers have carried
photographs of this year's
White House Christmas card.
The Carters, it is reported, are sending out 60,000 cards this year. That's quite a jump from the modest 1,300 cards that were sent each year by the Eisenhowers, who started the tradition.
The First Family doesn't have to sit down and sign every one of those 60,000 cards—that's taken care of by having the signature engraved. And secretaries are helpful when it comes to addressing and stamping the
greetings. But it's still a staggering number of cards going out from one address.
And it reflects a lot of planning and thought—no last-minute decisions there.
ITS HARD for me to believe, too, but there are in this world people who have already purchased the gifts from our Christmas Christmas. Shopped, selected, and even wrapped them.
And well-organized cooks have made their cookies, cakes and candies, which are
now all prepared and packed away for holiday parties.
This is all rather frightening to one who's still caught up in tests and term papers, not to mention the final exams that run practically into Christmas Eve.
Part of the problem, at least for me, seems to be the way semesters are scheduled these weeks. I should probably Christmas vacation was just Christmas vacation—a couple of weeks off to relax and celebrate before returning to school. The finals and semester break.
THEN SOMONE got the bright idea of wrapping Christmas vacation and semester break into one neat package. It looked pretty good first, but it complicates matters later. The realizes that life goes on on beyond Mound Oread.
Maybe someday a humane administrator will decide that students are people too, with interests and responsibilities beyond the campus. And a teacher who will be allowed the luxury of time to enjoy the Christmas holiday.
But this year, the Christmas cards keep coming and I get further and further behind. Maybe I'll just wait until next month, then good people a copy of my history term paper.
Bad lighting at new statue site negates meaning
Perhaps they'll understand.
To the editor:
I would like to contribute these thoughts to the discussion concerning the moving of the sculpture from its present location.
KANSAN Letters
It is clear from the records that Daniel Chester French, the sculptor, visited the campus, studied the campus and selected that location in Green Hall of Great Hall. He did this before, not after, he began studies for the proposed sculpture. One can be certain that French, a sculptor who worked in a now largely dormant tradition, was concerned that his work take form within the environ and the environment at that particular spot.
This attitude is in strong contrast to that of many present-day sculptors who do their works largely in a vacuum with little or no concern or regard for relation to context or environment. We hope that we will hope that their work will eventually find its way into the suitably neutral environments of present-day museums.
As a result of his concern for contextual relations, this sculpture was shaped with an awareness that it would be faceless. And as we have seen of this we have Uncle Jimmy facing into the morning sun and
I would strongly suggest that there is symbolic meaning in this changing light pattern and that it is highly significant in the work. It is a meaning that would not be present were the figures shifted from right to left (this is another symbolism is further strengthened by the interchange suggested by the position of the two figures and the manner in which the duality of the two figures "frame" the empty, though important, opening between them. This emptiness gains importance by its axial
In the proposed new location the sculpture and the figures would be facing northeast. The symbolic significance of the changing light will be completely lost. With this reversal of perspective the fingers to the natural light the back sides of the figures will be toward the sunlight during the great part of the day.
There is a significance in this that is, perhaps, best left unstated. At certain times of the day, particularly during the winter and early spring months, the figures will be in shadow.
One can be certain that French did not intend this. I can say this knowing that the American school about how light fell on his work. His effort to secure the proper lighting for the figure of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., is well documented.
Added to the reversal of the figures in relation to natural light in the proposed new location, the figure is intended to light the figures from below at night. Has anyone considered that children seem to derive great fun from holding a light on their head? make them appear grotesque?
There are other concerns that might also be expressed: The present stylistic unity of the sculpture and old Green Hall; they are of one time. The skillfully handled scalar relation between the sculpture and the present architectural setting; one can be equally sure that French was concerned about this.
What disturbs me most about his proposed move is the seeming lack of sensitivity. Is no one aware that the proposed action is nothing less than the wanton destruction of a work of art?
Curtis Besinger Professor of architecture and urban design
AMA group right in ruling To the editor:
Upon reading Richard Hood's article in the Kansas City Times entitled, "AMA Shoots Down Rural Doctor Project," I was able to overlook several errors as management corrected upon reading your editorial of Dec. 1, I am fearful that these errors will be perpetuated.
First of all, the AMA is not responsible for the refusal to accredit the Garden City residency program or any graduate program in medicine. The residency review committee is responsible to the Liaison Committee for Graduate Medical Education, a committee of the Coordinating Council for Medication Education. The CCME has been
given this authority by the Office of Education of the United States. The Coordinating Council accretais all medical programs offered by four liaison committees; one for medical schools, one for graduate programs (residencies); one for postgraduate programs (Continuing education) and one for schools of allied health.
The CCME has representation from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the American Board of Medical Specialties, the Council of Medical Special Societies andenumbers (appointed by HEW).
The responsibility for residency review, examination and accreditation lies with Liaison Committee for Graduate Medical Education and not the AMA thus in this case the AMA has been given her underserved "black eye."
Secondly, one must remember that the Residency Review Committee consists of knowledgeable and conscientious individuals. They are experts in medical education. They stand for quality programs for training and know perfectly
well that inferior, unacceptable programs will not be accepted by medical graduates seeking employment. What one selfish useful purpose can be served by having a residence program in Garden City of questionable quality and capacity. You answer the answer, of course is obvious.
There are other answers to the rural health problem in Kansas that are more proper and as responsible, and less likely yet been approached. However, I should like to point out that existing family practice residences in Kansas are now capable of graduating 32 students every seven years ago there were none. That is not bad progress when one considers the technicalities involved in creating complicated, accredited, educational institutions.
I, too, hope that the legislature continues its fine support, but I also hope that we go in the right direction.
George E. Burket, Jr.
Department of family practice
Revise Kansan for Christmas
To the editor:
Third: Elizabeth Goetz (who is chairperson, not "a board member") of the Advisory Committee on Human Experimentation has advised UKSHA that the collection of
Our Christmas list this year is
Sunflower House article inaccurate
To the editor;
Second: The house is not used as a behavior modification research project for the Department of HDFL, contrary to the norm. The department has no projects in the house and never has.
Your lead article of Tuesday, Dec. 6 contains a large number of factually erroneous, misquoted and misleading statements about falsehoods than truths. The libelous and slanderous statements it contains, together with its headline diametrically opposite to the truth, have damaged Sunflower House, impugned the integrity of the Board of Directors of the University of Kansas Student Housing Association, and caused embarrassment to the treatment of Human Development its faculty and its students.
First the headline: "Sunflower House Closing" is categorically false. Would you headline an article on the Daisy Hill Dorms "KU Dorms Closing" if you discovered that student dorm doors routinely fail to comply with academic year? That is the situation at Sunflower House: *Hotel contracts expire May 31*.
data on human behavior that does go on in the house (consisting of asking residents to rate their satisfaction with various house programs and records of inspections of maintenance jobs) does not require approval for penetration "perimentation," and does not require approval by ACHE, despite the fact that UKSHA has filed a memorandum with ACHE describing the program, all contrary to your article. (No application for research" has been made to HDFL." nor by any other department, and they are not "required of all University Departments doing research.")
Fourth: Miller did not say "... he would apply next year to use the house as a research project."
Sixth: Keeping records and trying out various modifications of programs and procedures in research—it is done by every student living group, and none of their charters make such activities "legitimate when does keeping records of how a living system works and trying to improve it by trial and error constitute an activity that they included in the group's charter?
Fifth, UKSHA is 33, not 41 years old, and it is not true that six of its eight board members were in the department of HDFL, since 1969.
Seventh: The last time any HDFL graduate student or faculty member conducted any data collection in the house that could be called research or behavioral research was in late 1973—four years ago—so such statements as "... the house (is) becoming more of a research project" and "the Professor Miller's" project and nothing more" are patently false.
Eighth: If the statement attributed to Cheryl Skaboua was in fact made by her ("the ultimate authority of the association over house admissions frightened by a claim of him" Board members) notices that I didn't smile at him I could be out of a place to live") then your reporter omitted the context: that Ms. Skaboua has a resident contract and cannot be evicted without serious penalties. "I will have several months a full voting member of the very same board your article alleges she is afraid of."
Ninth: The Corporation (UKSA) has just spent approximately $30,000 in remodeling to bring the house up to its new fire alarm system (now installed) was occasioned by the decision of UKSA to try to work with one of the disaffected workers to improve the different fire alarm system than the one UKSA had ordered, UKSHA complied with Mr. Schmittendorf's request and cancelled its contract with one supplier in order to contract with a supplier working with him, instead, ironically, Mr. Schmittendorf's unfounded accusations and those of Mr. Opiheim were published as if true, despite the fact that your reporter was explicitly told you and given names of informants who could verify the truth. We even gave your reporter the phone numbers of 14 former residents, who, unlike Schmittendorf and Opheim, had moved to the house, instead of against it the resident there.
Tenth: The vast majority of present and past residents are not either dissatisfied nor of the opinion that their freedom to run a successful living group has been infringed by UKSAH the Department of HDPL, Professor Miles O'Meara on his graduate students. There has never been a "purge" of residents. The house was reorganized in 1971 and had to be closed briefly for that purpose. It was closed in the summer months of 1976 solely in order to complete the extensive remodeling I referred to in the previous chapter. Every evicted from the house. Three persons on whose unsupported statements of disaffection most of your article was based.
Sunflower House is alive and
well and open and accept
applications from KU students
who might wish to live there
next semester. We invite you
to visit the University
community who is interested to visit
the house and talk to the
students living there. You will find
that contrary to your article,
losses, but winners.
John Wright
Chair, Board of Directors
University of Kansas Student
Housing Association
President of human
development
Sunflower was congenial home
To the editor:
Good journalism has never been one of the Kanans's strong points and the recent front-page coverage given to the woes of Sunflower House (Dec. 6) once again demonstrates the haphazard shallowness of its reporting.
The article was entitled,
"Sunflower House closing;
former residents critical."
Who are these former residents? Your ace staff reporter, Terry Selby, primarily relied upon the comments of colleagues, Rick Opheim, Jake Schmittendorf and Jim Bogler to express the "general discontent of last year."
I was also a former resident. Most of us moved out of the house during the spring and summer of last year because of the unbearable conditions existing in the house at that time, and the cause of these conditions did not come from the University of Kansas Student Housing Association or the Human Development and Family Life department or any other university. The very individuals Selby relied upon so heavily in his article.
Unfounded accusations and personal insults, of a type so freely used in the article, were their stock and trade in their juvenile battle against "establishment."
1 and the majority of residents found the house a congenial, cooperative and thoroughly enjoyable place to live throughout the fall when the weather degenerates atmosphere of fear and hostility during the spring semester, any decent and concerned member of the house simply moved out in disgust. At home House is bound to attract its share of malcontents and born losers. That these same people should be taken as representative of an entire house and given the legitimacy to own their property and furishing. Send Selby back to the classified ad section.
William Jones
William Jones
Toneka graduate student
short. All we ask is that the editorial writing in the University Daily Kansan aspire to such journalistic goals as sophistication and accuracy of fact.
On Dec. 8, Mary Mitchell rendered an insensitive and misguided article regarding the abduction of an indigent letter to Santa Rick Thaement announced his aspiration to adorn the cover of Peo-
Please, dear Sara, is a higher standard of editorial writing in the Kansan too much to ask?
Gary Davis
Gary Davis
Lawrence graduate student
Kerry Barsotti
Leawold sophomore
History class has the answer
To the editor:
Hey, fellow students, I have found an amazing course. Amazing because one gets to see and virtually experience the world of our country's a course in it will be moving part of a society that can be coped with and understood. History is a continuous process in which no breakages exist; each decade of history often with the future already planned from the previous decade.
The point is that this is an enlightening process, a way for you, for me, to better understand the way our world works and why. By knowing these things we all become more fully human, which more fully human, which turn leads us to being a better society. Needless to say, the previous statement is the goal of the course, one of a few goals that are reached by the end of the semester. By being more aware of how to deal with the problems that exist in our world.
This course is History 127, American History from beginning to end, taught by Professor Clifford Griffith.
Alexandra Rice Leavenworth senior
To the editor:
Moving Jimmy will upset past
I was pleased to see that the Kansan advocates a reconsideration of the moving of the statue of Uncle Jimmy for those around who think that the concern is perhaps trivial, it is true that the case in point seems small, but the principle is large. It amounts to a basic attitude environment and history itself.
In the case of the environment it means that no pattern or relationships (no boundaries) between it and its isolated entity to be moved about without regard to the larger patterns in which it is embedded or to the patterns of the same size that surround it or other features. If they are embedded in it. This is a fundamental view of the world, and it was recently stated very simply by the architect who recently worked on the master university of Oregon in Eugene;
"It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must create a web of things and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you build is now a web of nature, as you make it."
In the case of history it means that the past is more than a collection of artifacts whose meaning can be altered by the changing of names or the moving of statues to suit the needs of the present, no matter how they are created. Needs may be. History itself is also a set of patterns, some large and some small, whose presence is all too fragile to be tampered with unknowingly.
in the rush to finish up the new Rush of Law building, we risk facing the future with a little less of the past. In so far as we make our word a little less coherent, a little less whole.
Stephen Grabow
Stephen Grabow Associate professor of architecture and urban design
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