Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Ann Premer, Editor Jamie Holman, Business manager Gerry Doyle, Managing editor Sara Cropper, Retail sales manager Angie Kuhn, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
Monday, April 5, 1999
Editorials
Public transportation, jobs play role in Commission endorsements
The University Daily Kansan editorial board has endorsed Denise Gibson, James Henry and Brenda McFadden for tomorrow's election for the Lawrence City Commission.
Voters tomorrow will select three names from a pool of six candidates to fill the seats being vacated by commissioners Bob Moody, John Nalbandian and Bonnie Augustine.
Members of the Kansan editorial board interviewed and gathered information about the original pool of nine candidates — with the exception of David McKinzey, who did not make himself available to the media
before the March 2 primary elec.
The Kansan editorial board has favored three candidates for tomorrow's election.
tions.
The candidates were asked about the issues they thought were pressing in Lawrence, their connection to the University of Kansas and the role KU students should play as Lawrence residents.
Gibson, 37, is a professional development manager for The Farm Inc. and received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Kansas. Gibson is a strong supporter of public transportation and is concerned with the closing and consolidating of public schools.
Henry, 64, is a retired associate director of the University of Kansas Placement Center. Henry also is a supporter of affordable public transportation and is interested in creating jobs for KU students in Lawrence.
McFadden, 35, is a certified public accountant and owner of McFadden & Associates. McFadden received a degree in business administration from the University, and she favors public transportation and maintenance of the downtown area.
Jeremy Doherty for the editorial board
State education spending needs hike
in the 1970s and '80s, the state developed an agreement with the Board of Regents to finance 75 percent of state tuition, leaving students to pay the remaining 25 percent. However, after years of high inflation and poor economy, the state deprioritized higher education.
education.
The result is a disturbing trend.
Tuition has risen about 400 percent since 1980 for an in-state resident.
Nonresident tuition has risen almost 600 percent.
Paying higher tuition would be expected because tuition nationwide is rising in both public and private institutions. However, KU student's tuition costs are rising at 2.5 times the state's contribution. The result is that students are paying 40 percent of their tuition and the state is only paying 60 percent. This is a long way from the 75/25 agreement.
The state needs to honor the 75/25 agreement concerning college tuition costs.
Even with this higher tuition, only 10.3 percent of students receive financial aid. Financial aid is crucial in helping people attend an institution with a quickly rising tuition, but our 10.3 percent is only half of the national average. For every dollar tuition rises and financial aid remains stagnant, there is one more student that cannot attend the University.
Coupled with rising costs is the slowly rising funding for the University. Faculty salaries are only 83 percent of those at other institutions, and about 3 percent of the top faculty leave every year for this reason. Technology, although slowly increasing, still is lacking on campus. As a result, students are paying more for less education.
There are two things that students can do to reverse these trends. The first is to vote. By voting for state legislators who would work for increases in state spending for higher education, problems of tuition, salaries, and technology would begin to disappear.
Second, students can support the Student Legislative Awareness Board. SLAB has been campaigning for tuition balancing since the beginning of the year, and it always will welcome more student help.
As students work toward both of these, the state will once again honor the 75/25 agreement. Only then will education become a public issue instead of a private one.
Kansan staff
Tara Kelly for the editorial board
Ryan Koerner ... Editorial
Jeremy Doherty ... Associate editorial
Aaron Marvin ... News
Laura Roddy ... News
Melissa Ngo ... News
Aaron Knopf ... Online
Erin Thompson ... Sports
Marc Sheforgen ... Associate sports
Chris Fickett ... Campus
Sarah Hale ... Campus
T.R. Miller ... Features
Steph Brewer ... Associate features
Augustus Anthony Piazza ... Photo
Chris Dye ... Design, graphics
Carl Kaminskil ... Wire
Carolyn Mollett ... Special sections
Laura Veazey ... News clerk
News editors
Advertising managers
Matt Lopez . . . Special sections
Jennifer Patch . . Campus
Micah Kafitz . . Regional
Jon Schlitt . National
Tyler Cook . Marketing
Shannon Curran . PR/Intern manager
Christa Estep . Production
Steven Prince . Production
Chris Corley . Creative
Jason Hannah . Classified
Corine Buffmire . Zone
Shaantae Blue . Zone
Brandi Byram . Zone
Brian Allers . Zone
Justin Allen . Zone
Broaden your mind: Today's quote "Beware the fury of a patient man." —John Dryden
How to submit letters and guest 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 home-town if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newroom, 111 Staufer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Ryan Koerner or Jeromy Doherty at 864-4924.
Guest columns: Should be double-spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
If you have general questions or comments,
e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com)
or call 864-4924.
Perspective
Enrollment techniques require luck, patience
Enrollment began Friday --- the glorious tradition of long lines and closed classes that marks the approaching end of the spring semester.
As the flowers start to bloom and bare legs become normal, hair is being pulled as students try to determine what classes to immerse themselves in this coming fall. By now, most students know that enrollment is much more than merely choosing classes. It is an art.
Perhaps when we are old and gray and looking back on our days at the University, the lines stretching
Jamie Patterson
opinion @ kansan.com
own long hallways, the strange smell of the enrollment room and the extremely nice — or extremely cranky — enrollment staff will creep into our memories.
These students — including myself — successfully have conquered the world of add/drop. I have become an honored veteran and founder of the add/drop support group.
I am the one who the enrollment staff knows by first name. I think they see me coming and draw straws to see who gets to help me.
For some, enrollment is easy; get in, get classes and get out. There is no doubt that the entire enrollment staff loves these individuals. They are the students who visit their adviser just before they hop into line so they know exactly which classes are open. They are also the individuals who have no idea what add/drop is. If you are one of these people, I admire you greatly.
Others simply are not as lucky as this select group. This group, which has a particularly tragic lack of luck, sends many down the road toward the infamous add/drop. They are the ones who have enrolled on the very last day of enrollment for the past five semesters.
You may have guessed it already, but I am the add/drop queen. Although this is a distinct honor, it is not exactly a voluntary position. I have had to go through add/drop every semester here.
I admit I am partially to blame. I love to "class shop." Class shopping is not for the
weak at heart. It entails visiting several sections of the same class to determine which will be best-suited for your individual needs. The beginning of this semester, I visited five different sections of an English class before settling on a convenient 9:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday class.
This round of enrollment, I have vowed to keep all the classes I enroll in the first time. This is quite a lofty goal — especially considering that usually half the classes I actually want are open.
This semester, however, a tragedy occurred. I encountered a Western Civilization teacher who hails from the Islands of Evil, Close-Minded and Unsympathetic. This particular teacher ruined all the faith I had in teachers taking pity on poor students who have been cursed with late enrollment times.
Speaking of enrollment times, supposedly they rotate so everyone will have the opportunity to enroll early at some point.
Closed classes have never been a deterrent for me. I have viewed this detail as a small obstacle. I just hunt down the professor during office hours and stay in the class until he or she gives in and hands me a closed-class opener.
With a little luck, this round of enrolling will be easier, and it may even be successful.
Best of luck to everyone. Prepare yourselves for the long lines and visit your advisor just before you go. Put down real alternate choices, take care of all your outstanding fines, and once you actually get into the enrollment room remember to move the line all the way down to the windows.
Take heart in knowing that enrollment is a phenomenon that only occurs twice a year, and remember that someday you will graduate. Some wonderful spring day, when others are standing in long lines, permit to enroll in hand, you can walk by and smile. Smile at all the poor students frantically flipping through timetables in search of alternate classes, and stroll on by.
Until that wonderful spring day, I'll see you at Strong Hall.
Patterson is a Minneapolis junior in English.
Severing of thumbs jolts lazy critics back to basics
In light of the death of movie critic Gene Siskel earlier this spring, I have had a revelation. My idea is certain to create a new found respect and understanding between those
in the media who critique works of art and their readers.
On the downside, the idea unfortunately requires a regrettable amount of ghastly violence. Please humor me.
Here it goes: All critics, whether they review movies, books or restaurants, should have their thumbs hacked off with an axe.
Without those opposing appendages, critics would
Jeremy Doherty
oinion@kansas.com
And this means that I must share their guilt. Careful readers of the University Daily Kansan may recall that I was the one who inaugurated a star-rating system at the Kansan when I began reviewing movies in early 1998.
And why stop with the thumbs? Let's get the critics who rate movies or CDs with stars or — even worse — letter grades. Thumbs, stars, happy faces — it's all the same.
apprehender, or deprive of the limb that separates mankind from the apes. They would seem less than human.
Then again, this necessary surgical procedure has a positive outcome. Critics — particularly those who rely upon cute little catchphrases such as "two thumbs up" — would have to resort to other methods to get their opinions across to the public.
The sad thing is that my little act, made in the hope of emulating my movie critic heroes, has had a ripple effect.
Oh. darn.
I now have corrupted those who followed me.
All are guilty of the same offense.
When T.R. Miller, features editor, began reviewing CDs for the Kansan last fall, she also made use of the four-star scale.
made use of the red star card.
Our successors this spring, movie critic Brendan Walsh and music critic Matt Cox, have followed our lead with one adjustment: The four-star scale I introduced has been replaced with a letter-grade system similar to what students receive on their report cards.
I feel like Dr. Frankenstein, looking on in horror at the beast that I've created. I assure you that my tail is firmly nestled between my legs.
If critics truly believe that the things they review are legitimate art forms — and having worked among them for more than five years, I know that they do — then I fail to see how they can justify the use of such ratings. I certainly can't justify it.
others like the four-star scale and letter grades. Newspaper designers like them because they dress up gray text. Newspaper editors like them because they provide a point for the reader to jump into the story, and the ratings give readers an inking of simply whether the critic recommends the movie, CD or restaurant.
This practice, used across the nation and, yes, at the University Daily Kansan, has run its course.
course. Sharpen up the axe. The thumbs are coming off
Doherty is an Olathe senior in journalism and was the Kansan movie critic during 1998.
Be that as it may, they also work against the mission of journalists, which is to spur debate and discussion among the public, allowing them to come to their own conclusions and ideas.
come to the table.
A star-rating system or a letter grade tells readers what to think. Seeing such a marking in black and white has a chilling effect on readers.
Further, these ratings allow critics to become sloppy. Instead of providing a thoughtful discussion of a movie or CD's strengths and weaknesses, they strive toward a tute sound bite that doesn't extend justice to the work of art.
Feedback
Columnist ridicules coupon carriers
This is in regard to the perspective written by Andrew Marino in Thursday's University Daily Kansan in which he expressed his opinions about the Student Senate elections. Not only did he express these, but tangled up in his views was a statement about the "counon wielding old men."
The "men," even though there are women who work in
9
Some of us appreciate their work and the free coupons, and contrary to what his article seems to suggest, they are working at a real job and not there trying to get a few votes. It is my opinion that if Marino keeps on sliding those in
these positions, too, happen to be working for a living. Not all of us here at the University of Kansas succumb to the prescribed etiquette that Marino suggests in his article: "head down and hands in pockets."
other professions and offering tips on how to get around them that he may end up one day also being ignored.
Maybe if this happens, he won't make statements such as this one, or if he does, maybe he can come up with a "more real argument," as he asks the Student Senate campaigners to do, for his point of view.
Carrie Gray West Linn, Ore., junior