Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Julie Wood, Editor Brandi Byram, Business manager Laura Roddy, Managing editor Shauntae Blue, Retail sales manager Cory Graham, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Scott Valler, Technology coordinator
Tuesday, November 9, 1999
Steve Sack / TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
Editorials
Proposed zero-tolerance policy only would perpetuate problems
Last week, the Department of Student Housing announced new possibilities to curb alcohol consumption in campus housing. Even though these measures are targeted to decrease consumption, they may actually increase it and, furthermore, increase the propensity for accidents.
The policy being reviewed would modify three major guidelines for on-campus housing alcohol policies. First, it would make it illegal to be intoxicated in University housing. Second, it would outlaw empty alcoholic containers of any kind, and lastly, it would allow punishment for those who are in a room with an intoxicated person.
These polices only will drive students out of their rooms, and more alarmingly, to their cds or elsewhere to party. Haskell University recently outlawed anyone being intoxicated in university housing. Earlier this year, Haskell's new policy was blamed for a drunk-driving accident that killed three students. It is evident that students will drink, so the University should seek to keep beniated people stationary, instead of forcing them to find other areas to drink legally.
Proposal should attempt to protect students,not force them into greater danger
at a bar and are intoxicated, since they can't go home? They have to find an alternative place to go, maybe increasing drunk traffic.
Plus, where does one go if they are
Outlawing empty containers is an understandable measure.
But this policy unjustly punishes innocent bystanders. What person can control whether his or her roommate will be drunk? And if one roommate is drunk, the policy would force the other to find somewhere else to stay, as they could be held responsible. This puts a burden on someone that has done nothing wrong.
The University should seek to protect students living in on-campus housing but not with these policies. By trying to enforce such rigid regulations, the University only will perpetuate the problem.
Rupali Limaye for the editorial board
Coke containers should be recycled
Is it possible to be halfway committed to ecological responsibility? This is a question that Coca-Cola ought to ask itself. Then it should go the extra mile and spend the extra dollar to use recycled plastics in their bottling.
A representative from Coca-Cola's industry and consumer affairs division was well-versed in Coke policy and rhetoric when she answered questions in a recent interview with the Kansan.
According to the representative, Coke has used plastic bottles for packaging since the 1930s, but it was in 1976 that one-liter bottles were first test marketed in vending machines. Supposedly, the goal was to give the consumer more options.
Students should not tolerate Coca-Cola's insistance on using non-recycled bottles
Whether an area is serviced by aluminum or plastic vending machines, according to Coke, is determined through test marketing. But KU students and faculty cannot remember being given the opportunity to decide what came to our campus, and plastic bottles are what we received.
recycled plastics in car parts and carpet. The plastics industry saw to it that virgin plastics became a much more economically appealing option for major companies. Coke had introduced plastic bottles with recycled content in 1991 but quit soon after gaining access to much cheaper, more destructive non-recycled plastics.
Coke spends $2 billion a year on recycled materials, more than any other soft drink bottler in the world. Yet it fails to use as much as other companies that seek to use
When faced with the option of either contributing to ecological degradation or sacrificing bottle-cap convenience, the correct answer is clear. This student body should not support Coke's use of non-recycled plastics in its bottles. If Coke is all we can get, we should at least be able to choose what container we suck it from.
Matt Dunehoo for the editorial board
Kansan staff
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law."
How to submit letters and quest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
**Guest columns:** Should be double-spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photocarraphed for the column to run.
Hubert Humphrey
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Chad Battles or Seth Hoffman at 864-4924.
If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924
Perspective
Lack of awards causes National Merit squalor
ear Chancellor Hemenway,
D. Courtier Remembray
The little boy you are quite busy, what with budget cuts, has motivated ACLU, a new capital campaign and aptly student senators demanding a free-standing rec center. But I wonder if I might be able to take just a moment of your time.
Four years ago, almost to the day, I took a test. The kind that requires a No. 2 pencil and a bubble sheet. My friend, I'll call him Chris, took that same test with me that day. Chris is $15,000 richer than I am (not counting next year's check) because he scored 13 points higher than I did; that's more than $1,000 per point for a test we took as juniors in high school. In case you couldn't guess, Chris is a National Merit Scholar. I am not.
Simpson columnist
joining kansas.com
You might argue that it is a good investment for the University to spend money attracting Scholars. In many cases, you certainly are correct. I commend you in your effort to increase the academic integrity of the University by showing a commitment to academic achievement. But your current recruiting policy assumes that all National Merit Scholars are outstanding students and that all outstanding students are merit scholars.
In my experience, this is not the case. My freshman year, two-yes, TWO-Merit Scholars who lived on my floor in Templin flunked out of the University. Not my idea of a good investment. And although I love Chris to death, he hasn't always lived up to his potential. Why only reward overachieving high schoolers when there are so many overachieving college students who equally deserve that much money, if not more? Why can't you earn a full ride once you're here?
If this sounds like sour grapes from one left out in the cold, you're absolutely right. If I sound bitter, it's only because despite performing well while at the University, I have little opportunity to increase my scholarship opportunities. The University only awards money to incoming freshmen. And the
University Scholars Program (of which I am a member) only awards $250 per semester despite claiming to bring together the best and the brightest each year. If I had been so "bright" four years ago, I would be making TWENTY times that amount. That, sir, is absurd. And what's to be said for students who attend schools that don't emphasize the PSAT? Many take the test not even knowing its eventual ramifications because their schools and counselors never tell them. One day, one test, $5,000. It doesn't make sense.
I think you emphasize merit scholars for two reasons. First, because of name recognition. When you announce that the University has recruited more than 100 merit scholars this year, all your fellow chancellors know what you mean. I agree, it makes the University look good. And second, it's easy. No one in Lawrence has to read essays, pore over transcripts or make difficult decisions. That's all done by someone else; high gain, low effort for the University.
But it's still high effort, low, low gain for many students. My solution is not to remove our emphasis on Merit Scholars. I think ultimately it will result in a higher status for the University. But I think it is important for you, sir, and others, to realize the great talents of those of us who maybe weren't feeling well one Saturday in October during our junior year in high school, or whose strengths lie in abstract problem solving, not vocabulary and math questions. There are so few opportunities for scholarships once at this university that it's very difficult to increase your aid package as a sophomore, junior or senior, regardless of merit.
I know that you are in the midst of a capital campaign. I urge you to designate a portion of that money for scholarships to be awarded to students who exhibit excellence here at the University, to reward those who actually excel in college, not just in high school. Few things would exhibit your commitment to academic excellence more than showing that your dedication does not end once we, as students, decide to attend KU, but rather continues through our graduation.
Simpson is a Lenexa junior in political science and international studies.
Cold War wasn't peaceful, Third World paid dearly
Ideas are the most powerful things on earth. Like air, they permeate the whole atmosphere of our planet and surround it like a cloud. Just as we cannot escape the air we breathe, we cannot escape the ideas that form the mental atmosphere of our globe. As air is indispensable for our existence, ideas also are vital to who we are as people. But just as the quality of air varies, so does the quality of ideas. In some places on our planet air is so stale that breathing it can make us sick. In the same vein, some ideas are so pernicious that thinking them can rumb our minds and bring our lives
The problem is that ideas, like air, can move. Unfortunately, ideas are dynamic. To continue the analogy with air, consider this: The people in New York are suing some utility companies located in Ohio. Why? The people in the Big Apple allege that the Ohio companies have been generating a lot of pollution in their facilities. This pollution, once in the air, has been drifting toward New York and polluting the air there. Do they have a point? The courts will decide
Donato
Fhunsu
guest columnist
opinion@kansan.com
What concerns me here, though, is this: ideas do pass from one mind to another, and through education, they pass from a few minds to many minds.
I wondered even more, a few weeks ago, when I picked up Diplomacy for the Next Century by Abba Eban, a former ambassador of Israel to the United States. I am interested in international relations, and I would like to know what diplomacy might be like in the 21st Century. But I was astonished to find out what this author said about the 20th Century: "Few people in 1989 were predicting that the Cold War was about to end. Conventional 'wisdom' told us that the East-East tendency in Europe would dominate the international system for several more decades. The idea that the Communist
empire would perish without a bloodbath was regarded as a fantasy."
Cold War? Without a bloodbath? I am not an expert on anything, but I think that the words we use betray our vision of the world. As Eban himself states, conventional wisdom had divided the world between West (the United States and its allies) and East (the Soviet Union and its satellites). Because no war was fought in Moscow or Washington, there was no "bloodbath" to the whole situation, and the evil Communist empire went down the drain peacefully. This was a good thing, and now we are supposed to be grateful and teach this "truth" in political science, history, economics and other courses in our schools.
But I question this "truth." The power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union led to the so-called proxy wars in many parts of the world: South America, Central America, Africa and Asia. And these wars, fueled by the American and Soviet ideologies, financed by American and Soviet money and carried out with American and Soviet arms, made the cold war very hot indeed, and shed rivers of blood.
During the so-called Cold War, the world, mostly the so-called Third World, bled and drowned in a bloodbath. Now, does the blood of all these people matter? If it doesn't, then let's continue to hypnotize humanity with the concept of the Cold War. If it does, by God, let's have the intellectual integrity to call it what it was; the Hot War.
All of us at institutions of higher education, whether students, teachers, administrators or support staff, are involved in the processing and transmission of ideas. Ideas are processed through thinking and transmitted through communication
Ideas rule the world. That's why, to paraphrase Socrates, the unexamined ideas are not worth thinking.
— spoken or written communication. Education, I always have been told, is about the search for truth. But sometimes I wonder about that stated goal and the actual practice of education.
Fhunsu is a graduate student at Kent State University and is a former Kansan columnist.
Feedback
Honest evolution debate needed
Kudos to Chad Bettes for his column "Intellectual Pursuit Only Goes So Far in Academia." I agree, our recent discussions at KU concerning evolution have been more political than scientific. Any view that disagrees with that of the intellectual elite is ridiculed and excluded, rather than debated on evidence alone.
I found it interesting to contrast Bettes' editorial with the story by Jim O'Malley on last week's intelligent design
lecture by Dr. Wells. In this article, Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy, said, "The critique of evolution seems to be I can't imagine this, so it must have been a miracle." What wasn't mentioned was that Professor Melott wasn't present at the lecture or that Dr. Wells didn't use any such argument. Rather, Wells challenged the evidence used by Darwinists to advance their explanation of biology and biological origins. That's what scientists do.
Kenneth Demarest Professor of electrical engineering and computer science
4
I agree with Bettes that KU has not covered itself with glory in its handling of this
important scientific debate. To this, I have a suggestion. Let's invite Dr. Wells' back for an honest debate on the issue. If we won't, then what are we afraid of?