Tomorrow's weather
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Kansan
Cloudy Tomorrow.
Monday
April 19, 1999
Section:
A
Vol. 109 • No. 133
Check out photos and facts about Mt. Everest as scientists study its actual height.
Online today
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
everest/
Sports today
Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams denies rumors he's headed to North Carolina.
SEE PAGE 1B
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THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Tutu preaches tolerance to diverse KU audience
(USPS 650-640)
Archbishop thanks students for anti-arpartheid help
By Kristi Reimer
kreimer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Archbishop Desmond Tutu converted Allen Fieldhouse into a church last night, exhorting audience members to recognize God's role in their diversity and oppose injustice wherever they encountered it.
"There is an African idiom that says, 'A person is a person through other persons.' "Tutu told a crowd of about 4,000 people. "I need you in order to be me. We are caught up in this incredible network of humanity. Whether we like it or not, we are family."
Tutu, archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, labored for years to bring the government-enforced racial segregation of apartheid to an end. He said that because human beings are created in God's image, each person possesses an intrinsic worth that binds them together across the globe.
"With every single fiber of our being, we should oppose injustice afflicted on anyone, anywhere," he said.
Tutu said the long lines of Black South Africans standing in line to vote for the first time in their lives in 1994 were a tribute to the nation's ability to finally recognize and celebrate its diversity.
He said the end of apartheid would not have been possible without support of the international community in the 1980s, and he thanked college students for their part.
the marker behind them.
"At a time when students should have been worrying about their exams and grades, they were in campaigns and rallies on our behalf."
Tutu said. "Against the wishes of the White House of the time, Congress passed anti-apartheid legislation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our victory is your victory."
He said using a physical attribute such as skin color as a qualification for admission to a university was bizarre.
"It would be like saying the primary qualification for entering the university is a large nose," he said. "If you wish to enter this university and you are afflicted with a small nose, you must apply to the Minister of Small-Nose Affairs."
Tutu also urged listeners to reject simplistic answers to the complex questions of life, which fostered fear of difference and, eventually, dangerous intolerance.
"Fear of diversity gave us the Holocaust and the many instances of genocide, where the Tutsi gets rid of the Hutu," Tutu said, referring to civil war in Rwanda.
He said the United States also had much to fear from intolerance.
"It is dangerous because that is what
makes it possible for a man to be dragged behind a pickup to die a gruesome death," he said. "I hope that you would have zero tolerance for intolerance."
Jutu said many simplistic, intolerant views were espoused by people who used the Bible as their basis for their beliefs about euthanasia, abortion and sexual orientation.
"The Bible says some extraordinary things that no right-thinking person would accent," he said.
He said college students, who were being taught to be supple, not rigid, would be able to make a difference.
"I say to you young people, dream — dream of a world where place can happen," he said. "Dream of a world where there is compassion and joy, that says we want to be an inclusive community. ... We belong in God's family."
community. We beamed the conflict in the Balkans in a press conference before his presentation in the fieldhouse. He said the region might benefit from a system similar to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which grants amnesty to people who confess having committed atrocities under apartheid.
"One weeps at the spectacle of so much suffering," Tutu said. "They might want to look at the possibility of people sitting down and telling their stories. If they are going to share
Above: Rachel Sixta, 10, a fourth-grade student at Briarwood Elementary School in Prairie Village, has her Bible signed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Sixta had an exclusive discussion with Tutu during his visit to the KU campus yesterday.
Right: Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, gestures during a press conference yesterday afternoon. Tutu spoke about racial recalliation to a crowd of about 4,000 at Allen Fieldhouse last night. Photos by Graham K. Johnson
the same geographic space, they should see if they can share the same story about it.
Tutu also met Rachel Sixta, a 10-year-old Prairie Village girl who had written him a letter, which Tutu answered.
letter, which I thought answere- it. "It's once in a lifetime chance," Sixta said.
Edited by Darrin Peschka
As grade averages at KU rise, some question if the grading standard has fallen
story by kristi reimer
It's not that Cameron Popp doesn't want to get A's. Popp, Hutchinson junior and honors student, has worked for his 3.7 grade-point average and wants to go to a prestigious law school.
+ photo illustrations by magnus andersson
But he has a problem with some high grades. In some classes, he says, other students who have put in far less effort received the same, or almost the same, grade as he. That makes his A count for less by comparison.
"I've had classes where it's obvious in discussions and participation that people aren't picking it up or aren't interested," Popp said. "But in those same classes, you'll get the
sadduce us.
"I think that students who really try and have a lot at stake as far as doing well in school are cheated in certain classes," he said.
The numbers show Popp may have reason to complain.
complaint.
In the last 20 years, the average GPA at the University of Kansas has crept up 7 percent, from a 2.68 in 1978 to a 2.87 in 1998. GPAs in the schools of Education, Pharmacy and Business have risen as much as 15 percent.
breakdown on a test, and two-thirds get A's." Popp believeth high-achieving college students have a lot to lose from lenient grading standards.
Some critics say an A doesn't mean what it
used to—exceptional work—and that a B has taken the place of a C to indicate average performance. KU officials say rising GPAs reflect students' greater competence and instructors' improved teaching methods.
As grades inch up across the country, "grade inflation" — the tendency to reward mediocre work with increasingly higher grades — has become part of a national conversation about academic standards.
Grade inflation worries some experts, but most teachers and administrators at KU aren't concerned at all.
See A on page 9A
Housing committee works to improve off-campus living
By T.J. Johnson
johnson@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
One of the goals Student Senate has been working toward for the past few years has been the improvement of housing conditions for students both on and off campus.
One of the Senate groups trying to improve conditions for off-campus students is the Landlord-Tenant Subcommittee, part of the Student Rights Committee.
The group was formed in August of last year and has been working to form a Web site that will list available rental properties in Lawrence. The site will
services are offered at each property as well as its condition and any complaints students have made, said Greg Smith, chairman of the Landlord-Tenant Subcommittee and off-campus senator.
off-campus senator.
"Our main goal is to make the off-campus experience more pleasurable and more relivable," Smith said.
Matt Dunbar, holdover senator, said most off-campus students had at least one story about being ripped off by a landlord. He said students who moved off campus needed references such as these to inform them about landlords students have had good and bad experiences with.
Smith said the subcommittee could refer students to Legal Services for Students if they are having problems with their landlord or roommates and post a lease guide to let other students know about potential traps in their
"Our main goal is to make the off-campus experience more pleasurable and more livable."
Braxton Copley, staff attorney with Legal Services for Students and an adviser to the Student Rights Committee
said he thought the
Greg Smith chairman of the Landlord-Tenant Subcommittee
lease.
andlord-Tenant Subcommittee was working hard to inform students about off-campus housing issues.
"I think they're trying to get information out to students and make them better consumers," Copley said. "They have been very
self-starting and self-motivating."
The Landlord-Tenant Subcommittee has a Web site up at http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~gs mith/ltls.html, which eventually will contain an updated list of feedback about rental properties and landlords in Lawrence.
"This is just the base we're working off of until we find a permanent home," Smith said.
Senate also has been working to improve the living conditions of students living on campus, but the results of this effort are less tangible because the
See COMMITTEE'S on page 2A
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