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Kansan
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Monday, November 1, 1999
Jamie Patterson / KANSAN
Editorials
Class of 2000's HOPE award given to deserving recipient
Each year the senior class selects one faculty member as the recipient of the HOPE award. This year's class has given that award to Vic Contoski, professor of English. The seniors could not have chosen a more deserving person.
Vic Contoski is an inspiring teacher, both in terms of his classroom philosophy and his concern for students. He believes that the literature his classes read has a direct relationship to the lives of his students. Every student brings a different background and perspective and, therefore, a special interpretation of literature.
Contoski is interested in encountering as many different interpretations as possible. He often leaves his class with his personal point of view on a poem or piece of prose and the piece as
English professor Vic Contoski shows excellence and concern in the classroom and beyond
seen through the point of view of a student. In this sense he cultivates his students, not just through the dissemination of factual information, but by empowering their thinking and reminding them that they own an interpretation of literature which is interesting and as important as any scholar's.
His concern for students reaches beyond the classroom. In his free time, Vic Contoski volunteers as a grief counselor for students who have lost family or friends. This pursuit has
often led Contoski to console family and friends allike, not just students here at the University of Kansas.
If you are lucky, you've had a chance to hear Contoski read some of his poetry. His work covers a wide variety of topics from mail carriers to scruff homeless men and historic buildings of Kansas. You may find his poetry amusing, you may find it touching, but no matter what your impression, Contoski would welcome your perspective.
Vic Contoski is a diverse man, a humanitarian, a poet and a great teacher. He is a credit to our university, not just because of his teaching, but because of who he is. We offer our congratulations to Vic Contoski on his well-deserved award.
Brett Watson for the editorial board
Time is right for Cuba policy change
The U.S. government has maintained a policy for years that helps Cuban dictator Fidel Castro hold onto power. How can this be, you might ask, with Castro's government a sworn enemy? The answer is that U.S. politicians have let their personal distaste for Castro overwhelm their ability to assess Cuba's current situation.
By keeping a nearly four-decade economic embargo on Cuba, the United States allows Castro to maintain support. The embargo, which includes food and medicine, serves as a convenient scapegoat whenever things in Cuba are particularly bad. In order to deflect attention away from his government's own failures, Castro needs only to blame the embargo — "yankee hostility" — for Cuba's economic and
The United States' posture toward Cuba hurts Cuban citizens, not Fidel Castro
social woes.
Rather than end Castro's power, which is likely only to happen when he dies, the embargo has served only to hurt the people of Cuba. Instead of leading to democracy in Cuba, it has led only to human suffering. This suffering never has reached Castro himself — at least not in any political or economic sense.
The embargo was brought into the news last week when Illinois Gov. George Ryan led a 45-member delegation of U.S. government, business
religious and university leaders to Cuba's capital, Havana. Ryan brought with him roughly $1 million worth of aid to the island and said that he disagreed with continuing the embargo.
It is no coincidence that a Midwestern governor would hold this opinion. Midwestern states, including Kansas, have lost billions of dollars in agribusiness sales because of the embargo. Cuba's climate is such that it needs to import the very products, like wheat, that grow so well in our state. Thus, the embargo has served not only to deprive the Cuban people, but Midwesterners as well.
The U.S. government should end its embargo of Cuba. It is a futtle and cruel effort that serves only the egos of a handful of political elites.
Erik Goodman for the editorial board
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Perspective
Great-grandfather's life taught courage, love
dearest Poppycock.
Dearest Poppycook,
Today is the sixth anniversary of your funeral. If you still were alive, you would be 105. I guess you were right when you told me you didn't think you would live to see 100. I never got a chance to ask you all the questions I
wanted, but you taught me more through your actions than your words ever could.
I remember the day after you passed away. I was giving a talk on Death Be Not Proud. I broke down in the middle of it, and tey-eyed, I finished it with a quivering voice. I didn't think I knew you well enough to be affected because I only saw you two or three times a year. But I guess I was.
Elizabeth Peacock columnist
I remember your funeral, serendipitously on your 99th birthday. Our school
opinion@kansan.com
priest did not perform his responsibility to say the All Saints Day service for the school — and instead attended your service. I never knew how many people you inspired in your long life. When Father Pan, my great-uncle and your eldest son, gave the eulogy, I couldn't help but smile. He told us about the day he decided to enter the seminary. Everyone thought that you, Frank Sr., were finally going to become a priest instead of him, Frank Jr. When he tried to correct them, they wouldn't believe him — Pan wasn't priest material, but Poppycock was. Maybe that's why you were buried in the robes of a Franciscan monk.
I really wish I could've known you better, but I guess now my only chance is to get to know you through family stories. Sometimes it's hard to believe that you started working on the shipping docks in San Francisco and ran away to become a cowboy in Montana when you were 14. You worked hard your entire life until you fell off that ladder while pruning the parish's tree in your mid-90s.
I can't imagine what it would be like to work as a janitor when your son is a principal, to get
three retirement checks and to live through the 1906 earthquake, the Great Depression and the dawn of space exploration. How were you able to raise six children after great-grandma Frankie died of tuberculosis and you refused to marry? What was it like to live through so many changes?
You were always a man of few words — one who told few stories of the past because the present was more important. When I came to interview you a year before your death, you were more interested in talking about the European Union and the recent attempts at establishing the Euro than answering my questions about your childhood.
Even though I didn't know you while you were alive, I hope that I am learning. I see how you valued commitment and did not take life too seriously in the eyes of Father Pan, the oldest teen-ager and football mascot in Tucson, Ariz. I see how you valued humor and living life to the fullest in the words of my great-aunt Mary. She is the oldest woman I know, tells the dirtiest jokes I've ever heard and gives lessons on how to juggle multiple boyfriends without getting caught.
I see how you valued serving others quietly and humbly, which is reflected in the actions of my grandfather John. He is the only man I know who misses on every family holiday so that the people at the soup kitchen might have a better one.
You never knew it, Poppycock, but you are one of my heroes, along with Jack London and Mark Twain. You are someone I would happily pattern my life after. You did everything you wanted to do, without skirting your responsibilities. I hope I can learn to live life without regret like you did. I always will remember you when I look at that oil-pastel painting at my parents' house; my brother and I recognized you from the portrait that day at the County Fair. I still can't believe you never told anyone you sat for it. Wherever you are, may you always be able to enjoy your day — old sourdough, with a block of cheese and a glass of Port wine, just the way you liked it.
Peacock is a Newark, Calif., junior in anthropology and political science.
Why don't students have a say in what we read?
Why do students have such a small voice in what we learn at the University of Kansas? After fulfilling the high number of requirements in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, we have little time to take electives. The content of the courses we do get to take, consequently, is of great importance.
I will graduate in May with degrees in history and English. And I will be downright embarrassed to admit all the works to which I have not been exposed. Let me on the works of ^american literature that I have missed. I've
never read Moby Dick in a class. I've never been assigned any Zora Neale Hurston, John Steinbeck, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Edith Wharton, Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams — and I could go on. I've only read a few short stories of Hawthorne and Faulkner.
How can this be? My experience is like a math major never learning calculus. If an English major isn't assigned works by these
Jay
Sexton
guest columnist
gonitor @ kansan.com
writers, who will be? And it is important that these texts be read. On one level, it is necessary to be familiar with these works to possess a basic academic literacy of our culture. In a larger sense, these works reflect our heritage, our thoughts, our experiences. They convey what it is to be an American, what it is to be human and what life is like.
What readings have I been assigned, then? I often wonder that myself. Lots of little excerpts and lots of short stories and lots of selections of things. And I feel that I have the right to say that I hate learning things in a perfunctory and superficial manner. I would rather thoroughly read four novels in a semester class than race through 200 years of American literature, reading four or five paragraphs from each author.
I also have been overexposed to certain works: Frederick Douglas's autobiography multiple times; several repeats of some Edgar Allen Poe short stories; and most amazingly (I know this is British literature but bear with me), I have been force-fed "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale" from the Canterbury Tales in four different classes.
I used to think that this curriculum repetition/exclusion was a result of the emphasis on multiculturalism and the trend of exposing students to the literatures of historically marginalized groups in our country. But I know now that is not the case. Different races, cultures and genres, from Native-American spirituals to the dominant tradition, seem to be proportionately represented. The problem, as simple as it seems, is a lack of communication.
What is needed is continuity between different classes and different professors. Interaction between faculty members and students will alleviate this avoidable problem.
I propose that a student advisory committee be established to create a list of what students would like or think that they should read. I will send a copy of this letter to the English department. This isn't a radical idea. Just select 10 English majors, preferably ethnically and academically representative of the student body, to create a list of books.
A second suggestion is to ask students what works they would have liked to have read on teacher evaluations. The final decision of what texts will be in a class, of course, resides with individual professors. But an idea of what students are interested in will make syllabus formation easier — especially in survey courses where professors select from 100-year periods.
Students should not be as passive as we are. This is our education, our money and — most significantly — our lives. The formation of the literary canon is of the utmost importance in defining our culture and ourselves. Everyone should have a say in what they learn.
Sexton is a Salina senior in English and history.
Feedback
Rock Chalk Revue's mission is clear
I am writing in response to Katrina Hull's editorial regarding Rock Chalk Revue. Had Ms. Hull taken a closer look at the organization, she would have discovered the truth about Rock Chalk Revue.
I am the senior advisor for Rock Chalk's advisory board. I have also served as the revue's executive director, assistant director and production manager.
Rock Chalk Revue is an organization which donates
Ms. Hull failed to mention that in the last three years, the advisory board outlawed color copies in the notebooks to cut down on costs. We also changed the format of the audition tape to save each living organization approximately $500.
Live auditions are not feasible because the judges go through each notebook and tape, on their own time, before interviews are held.
more than $40,000 annually to the United Way. In addition, we give more that 30,000 hours of community service each year, assisting local agencies.
A
So yes, Ms. Hull, the theme is "Out of Focus," but the advisory board and Rock Chalk Revue are crystal clear. They are a 51-year tradition at KU, who do nothing but raise money and donate time to help the community.
The advisory board does not tell groups how much they need to spend. Each living organization budgets what it wants to spend. The advisory board does encourage groups to save money, but the final decision rests with them, not us.
Alex Locke St. Paul, Minn., segior
V