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Opinion
Friday, March 17, 2000
Centralized advising needed at all levels
Many professors don't have the time or knowledge to advise
An admissions recruiting video for the University of Kansas shows a student and his adviser walking side by side. After watching this clip, one would'
believe that most KU students have close relationships with their advisers. But many students who attend the University know that this is not the case.
Advisory professors are often torn between devoting time to their classes and giving time to those who they advise. Because advising is not their primary focus, they are often unprepared to answer questions regarding requirements in other departments. Some departments do not even offer a choice of advisers. All of these factors make the process of choosing classes more confusing than it has to be.
The Freshman-Sophomore Advising Center fills an important role for underclassmen, but once they are turned loose to find their own advisers, they might run into trouble. To improve this situation, the University needs to create a centralized department to advise all students.
This would allow professors to devote more time to their own students. The division of time between advising students at the end of the semester and meeting with students from classes about final exams often is extremely time-consuming. The result is that professors are not sufficiently
prepared to advise students. Having professional advisers would allow professors to do their jobs without neglecting other students' advising needs.
Professors frequently are not knowledgeable about requirements outside of their own departments and are not sure about graduation requirements. This increases the probability that students will take unnecessary classes and spend more time and money than necessary.
Furthermore, because switching majors and even schools within the University is a common practice, we need advisers with extensive knowledge about each department. When a student decides to make a change, he or she should be able to draw on an adviser's understanding of what classes will transfer. The knowledge that a well-informed adviser provides may be the deciding factor in a student's decision to change majors.
Another flaw is that several departments have only one appointed adviser. This means that students are denied the opportunity to find advisers who understand their academic goals. A pool of knowledgeable advisers would provide options for
A centralized department of advising would eliminate the possibility of having misinformed students because it would be every adviser's primary job to understand requirements and options.
This would ensure that the only faculty members who advise do so because they have genuine interest in a student's academic career. Professors who have experience with a student's specific learning
Students who attend the University are fortunate to be offered a variety of classes not available at many
Tara Alexander for the editorial board
Park won't quite be Disney, really just Wizard of Ooze
The scene is Kansas City's Kaufman Stadium. The once directionless Royals have just won the 2002 World Series. In the camera-filled locker room, a champagne-soaked Johnny Damon, the hero of the series, turns to a camera.
"Johnny Damon, you've just won the World Series, what are you going to do next?"
Pinggong Seems a little strange, doesn't it? If developers get their way though, the old Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, a 9,000-acre area southwest of DeSoto, will be known as the Wonderful World of Oz.
Skip Palmer, the president of Oz Entertainment and a former Disney executive, wants to spend more than $600 million, some of it from the State of Kansas, to build the new resort and theme park. In fact, every time
Seth Hoffman opinion editor opinion@kansan.com
Palmer talks about the planned park and resort, he calls it a project of Disney proportions.
The plans include: an interactive theme park, hotel, conference center, golf course, water park, movie-television theme park, western village, family sports complex and, because it is in Kansas, an R.V. park.
If you've driving along K-10, the Sunflower plant is just to the south. Its many water towers can be seen from high spots in Lawrence. You've probably never driven by and thought, "My, wouldn't that picturesque piece of contaminated government property be the perfect tourist destination?"
I think about it every time I drive past. In fact, one time I was passing by and saw a column of black, acrid smoke pouring upward from somewhere inside the compound. Being the adventurer that I am, I exited off K-10 and like any normal man, drove toward the fire. When I got there, I witnessed what was one of many planned demolitions of buildings that had been part of the complex. In fact, cleaning up the place is going to cost more than $50 million.
I couldn't tell what the building had been used for, but the guys tending the fire were wearing those blue biohazard suits like the ones in the movie Outbreak. That seemed to be a pretty good signal that I didn't belong there. Had they been Munchkins, I wouldn't have been so scared.
The financing of the Oz project is a drama that has been going on for several years. Oz folks first wanted tax breaks from the state and then wanted help in actually paying for it. This week, the Legislature passed a bill to issue $250 million in bonds to help pay for the park. Why? I can't explain it.
The question is, who in the wide world is ever going pack up the Griswold family station wagon to take a cross-country trip to DeSoto? The folks at Oz estimate nearly 3.5 million people will do so. To draw them Oz, they will use ... the Internet! Palmer claims that Oz will use the Internet the same way Disney used early television to lure park goers. In fact, Oz needs 2.1 million visitors per year just to break even — before taxes.
That might not seem like much, especially when you consider that Disneyland drew 13.4 million visitors last year. But Disneyland sits in the middle of the giant Los Angeles metropolis, in L.A. proper contains 3.4 million people. Kansas City has 0.4 million. That's a big difference. In addition to Disneyland, California has a couple of other things going for it that also draw tourists, including hundreds of miles of coastline, tons of professional sports teams, the Nixon library and warm weather.
The last one is the real kicker. Disneyland and most other major theme parks are open 365 days per year. Because of our not-so-balmy Kansas climate, Oz will be open only 185 days per year. While Disneyland (in Southern California) averages 36,000 visitors per day, the Wonderful World of Oz (in DeSoto) will have to average 11,350 just to break even.
Hoffman is a Lenexa senior in journalism.
Oz backers will retort that 78 million people live within a 600-mile radius of DeSoto, and as Palmer says, Midwesterners travel.
Another International Women's Day on March 8 has come and gone, and still the United States does not support international efforts to end discrimination against women. The United States remains one of a handful of countries that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which addresses a wide range of issues specifically affecting women.
U.N. treaty would help stem violations of women's rights
This last year, women's human rights have been in the news a lot because many women continue to suffer from horrendous discrimination and violence. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive. The Kuwaiti parliament again voted against women receiving the right to vote. In Afghanistan, women cannot appear in public without male family members. In Zimbabwe, they can be stripped of their family homes because of discriminatory traditional inheritance laws. In the United States, pregnant prisoners are often
Kyle
Browning
guest columnist
pinter@kansan.com
shackled during labor and delivery. And, throughout the world, women are victims of domestic violence.
the world, women are victims of CEDAW was created to deal with some of these problems. The treaty was adopted by the United Nations in 1979 and has been ratified by 165 members of the U.N.'s 188 member states. The United States was active in drafting the convention and President Carter signed it in 1980. To take legal effect, international treaties such as CEDAW must be ratified through the appropriate measures in each country. In the United States, ratification requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.
CEDAW recognizes that discrimination prevents women from enjoying the full range of human rights and freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural and civil fields. The convention thus outlines measures that governments are required to take to end such discrimination.
One fear many Senators have expressed is that U.S. ratification of CEDAW would give too much power to the international community and damage U.S. sovereignty. This is simply untrue. As with many international agreements, countries can express "reservations, understandings and declarations" in
cases in which there are discrepancies between the international convention or treaty and domestic law. The vast majority of CEDAW complies with U.S. law and the convention is compatible with the principles of the U.S. Constitution. Also, according to Amnesty International, "where any differences do exist, the convention calls for appropriate measures to be taken to progressively promote the principle of nondiscrimination. CEDAW grants no enforcement authority to the United Nations."
Another fear people have expressed in regard to CEDAW is that the convention supports abortion through its promotion of access to "family planning." Again, this is untrue. CEDAW does not address the matter of abortion and, according to the U.S. State Department, is "abortion neutral." Many countries in which abortion is illegal, such as Ireland and Rwanda, have ratified CEDAW.
An example of the mentality that has prevented ratification of CEDAW in the United States involves several female congressional representatives who interrupted a Senate hearing to confront one of the treaty's main opponents, Senator Jesse Helms. They were unceremoniously removed from the hearing room by the security personnel at Senator Helms' order. He also demanded that the congresswomen "act like ladies" and stop causing trouble. In response to that incident, female congressional representatives met with Senator Barbara Boxer, who has now taken the lead on CEDAW by introducing Senate Resolution 237, which calls for hearings and for Senate action by International Women's Day. Obviously, this has not happened, but ratification can happen if U.S. citizens demand that the government take a stand against discrimination.
Although women in the United States enjoy many more freedoms and rights than women in other countries, U.S. ratification of CEDAW would send a powerful message to the international community and to other countries. The power of CEDAW would be greatly enhanced with U.S. ratification, which, in turn, could bring about real change in the lives of women in many countries. All the United States has to do is ratify CEDAW, which would verify that this country does not support discrimination against women and that it will actively work toward establishing the full range of human rights to all women of the world.
Brownning is an Overland Park junior in political science.
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Kansan is ignoring page one stories
In last Friday's, this Monday's and this Tuesday's papers, there have been articles on page one about trivial aspects of Student Senate campaigns. Readers could find out about a humorous coalition, a name similarity between two groups on campus and a prestigious campus figure running with a Senate coalition.
What the Kansan determines to be the most "newsworthy" topics for page one are not what's most important to the student body.
But those things do not get any deeper than the names. Trivial issues about Senate campaigns are not as important as a major coalition establishing its platform for the year.
The Delta Force Coalition told the Kansaan about the issues it is working on, things that make a difference to the University of Kansas. But that information got buried in the middle of the paper. Are issues like off-campus housing resources, improved campus recycling and a better student union not "newsworthy" or political enough for page one coverage?
Amy Cummins Newport, N.C., graduate student and graduate student senator
The Kansan runs cartoons making fun of campaign season. But it fails to give adequate attention to groups like Delta Force that actually do something, or to people who follow through on making positive changes for campus.
Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, but never catch up."
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