UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kanan and Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
March 5.1980
Aid standards pitiful
Scholarships and financial aid programs have helped put many deserving students through institutions of higher education—students who otherwise never would have advanced their educations beyond high school. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, standards for some financial awards sank too low while the stakes rose too high.
The financial aid policy at the University of Kansas presents a prime, and pitiful, example.
Essentially, a financial aid program awards money to financially needy students according to the extent of their need and according to their ability to academically justify their receiving aid.
The standard for academic justification at KU now requires a student receiving financial aid to have a cumulative GPA of 2.0, or a "C" average, at the end of his ninth semester. The GPA he has to maintain only a 1.5 GPA, starting from his fourth semester, to continue receiving financial aid.
This standard supposedly represents "reasonable academic progress." However, the standard is clearly unreasonable and ridiculously low. It requires the sake of academic progress and fair distribution of funds for all.
Last week the Senate Committee on Financial Aid to Students, recommended that the standards be changed to require students to obtain a degree or to take fourth semester here. The recommendation is sensible and justifiable.
Why should students receiving financial aid not be expected to do at least average "C" work? College "culture shock" is an acceptable excuse only when offered by a freshman or transfer student. The thought that a person has to be a graduate student requires a certain degree successfully maintain a 2.0 overall GPA is overwhelmingly depressing and unrealistic.
For those sophomores who have taken a free and easy ride on financial aid, reality is looming around the corner. If they try to pursue majors in the fields of journalism, education or liberal arts and sciences next fall as juniors, they will be rejected. All of these schools either do, or will, require overall GPAs of 2.0 or higher for admission.
The standards for financial aid eligibility should be raised. Any student who needs nine semesters to adjust before he can produce average academic work does not belong in college-at anyone's expense.
Numbers lack strength in student evaluations
Student evaluation of teachers at the University of Kansas, as it is now, has only one fault - it doesn't make an av sense.
For years, a student evaluation of instructors has been a prerequisite for faculty members for tenure, sabbatical leaves, merit salary increases and promotions.
KU instructors, for the most part, want feedback from their students. However, many of the surveys used at KU do not
COLUMNIST
david lewis
measure reliably a teacher's competency or effectiveness. In fact, many of the surveys are no more than a confusing collection of numbers added up by a computer.
In one instance, students are asked on a scale of one to five whether they agree or disagree that their professor was "dry and humourless". First of all, a professor doesn't have to be Steve Martin to be an effective teacher and second, the one-to-five scale is ridiculous.
For example, take the Curriculum and Instruction survey, used by about 40 percent of KU's faculty members. The survey does not assess objectivity; it is basically popularity poll.
ON THE SCALE, (1) means disagree, (2)
moderately disagree, (3) neutral,
(4) agree, or (5) a student marks (3) with his No. 2 pencil, it
means he is neither disagreeing nor agreeing with his professor. or
maybe he moderately disagree or
moderately agrees. Who knows? KU of-
fice.
Many of the survey's questions are geared to the class material, which is blatantly
discriminatory for instructors who teach classes that all students are required to take. The influence of these surveys on students' interest and promotion is impossible to determine.
VET, THESE important decisions are in part based on the results of the one-to-five scales, which are tabulated by a computer. The resulting data do not depend on meanless set of numbers.
Students don't benefit from these surveys, either. The computerized surveys tend to be more difficult than the ones so ambiguous. Because they can't justify their criticisms, students are not as likely to assign a bad number on a computer to a student or to criticize a teacher in a written statement.
Moreover, the surveys do not distinguish a bad teacher from a good one. In a written test, a student is judged by criticizing an instructor and be more honest in his assessment. On a computer sheet, a student cannot express his opinions with a question-and-answer system. Both the students and the teachers lose.
CONSEQUENTLY, student evaluations should not be a prerequisite for promotion to faculty positions. In addition, considers that tenure is granted more on the basis of a professor's research contributions than on experience.
This is not to say that student evaluations of teachers should be banned, only that they should provide feedback and that students should provide feedback to an instructor in a communicable manner. Students should use words in their assessment of an instructor, not pick a random number that makes little sense.
Otherwise, the teachers should be given a one-to-five scale of their own to judge the validity of the numbers: (1) exaggeration, (2) big white lie, (3) big white lie, (4) big white lie, (5) gibbocky.
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Inflation used to be likened to the common cold—an uncomfortable but temporary malady that everyone could suffer through without too many complications.
Inflation is 'cancer' that awaits cure
But as the pace of inflation steepens, the rhetoric of politicians and economists is beginning to take on the grave tone of a political climate in which the term is terminally ill. Nobody has said it yet, but it only a matter of time before somebody starts calling inflation "a cancer" eating away all of us.
"Cancer" just may be the most appalling crop, but it is also propagated by nearly every facet of the economy. Hardly a day goes by without the announcement of a new day, herefore
First it was the government's profligate deficit spending, then it was farm price supports, then it was the loose credit that enabled so many people to overheat, then it was the OPEC oil oughe, then it was a debt relief program, then it was the greedy labor unions...
And now, politicians and economists tell us, our 18 percent annual rate of inflation is the result of inflation itself. How perceptive! We are not as much acquainted with acceptr damp inflow as a reality, they creating a self-funnel of disposable income to get their hands on something real, instead of leaving their money to languish in their account to await imminent evasion.
ALL THIS spending stokes the fires of businesses that spinning ever higher, the economists tell us. So, what does President Carter do? He asks for business and wage-earners to help pay the bills.
guidelines, and asks Federal Reservo Board chairman Robert Volcker to raise interest rates into the stratosphere.
Meanwhile, the inflation rate has soared six percentage points. The therapy Carter prescribed hasn't done much to hold down our fever, let alone cure the disease.
brenton r.
COLUMNIST schlender
Although no consulting physicians have yet been called in, unsolicited medical opinions are pouring in from a spate of Republicans and a couple of Democrats, who coincidentally, are yying to evict the White House, who presently occupies the White House.
THE REPUBLICANS, excluding John Anderson, are reciting a predictable titility of curses—receded federal spending, tax cuts, and other policies like Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Howard Baker and John Connally argue these relatively mild treatments, hinting that a balanced budget is all it takes to re-establish the current state of our own, personal "deficit spending."
Anderson agrees that a balanced budget would help, but he ties inflation to the OPEC oil gouge. His remedy is to place a 50 centage tax on gasoline, to cut our dependence on foreign oil and thereby reduce our nation's vulnerability to grating oil prices.
ALL THESE REMEDIES, like President Obama's policy of inflating air as the result of an economic cause—either loose credit, or federal deficit measures—gouges, or living陋习 brings.
Jerry Brown calls for a 'new austerity', which sounds great philosophically, and addresses the responsibility of the in-love family. But he doesn't say how a society obsessed by
One candidate, however, recognizes that inflation is a cancerous disease that needs comprehensive treatment, not stop-gap surgery. Interestingly, he also is the candidate who seems most concerned about the physical health of the citizens of this country by providing it with as traumatic as the disease, but if inflation indeed is a cancer, we have no choice.
No one would argue that these are all symptoms of inflation. Together they are responsible for it. But by attacking only one symptom, we can only have ooep for a limited cure at best.
materialism could learn en masse to limit its consumption.
ALSO, EFFECTIVE enforcement of controls requires a bureaucracy of panels and boards and regulators and investigators who turn into a costly and negligible nightmare.
And it can be argued that a large part of our economy is still competitive—that most price changes are the result of changes in demands and costs in the marketplace—so any control or regulation will create new challenges and further diminish productivity.
But worst of all, wage and price controls are invariably unfair, especially to low-income workers. The worker lucky enough to own the job has little control over much better off than the worker who, by some luck of the draw, didn't get his raise before controls. Furthermore, low-income workers don't have the opportunity to earn a good wage, or benefit benefits and expense accounts.
EDWARD KENNEDY suggests that it's time to consider wage and price control. By limiting increases in wages and prices, Kennedy says his plan would achieve "a mutual agreement among workers and manufacturers" as the burden of rising raw material costs.
workers and producers scramble to jack up wages and prices before the deadline arrives.
He contends that controls are the only means of harnessing all the elements that contribute to inflation. Instead of asking for volunteer help, or using prohibitively high prices on certain commodities, or cutting spending and taxes to indirectly pour more money into the hands of consumers, Kennedy is advocating a more direct approach.
Kennedy's proposal may sound drastic, but it is one of the government monitoring and monitoring every phase of our economy, but it's patentery obvious that nothing mild or neutral
The arguments against wage and price controls are nearly overwhelming. For one thing, even idle talk about the possibility of control triggers anticipatory inflation, as
ALL THAT sounds bad, but our inflation rate is higher than it has ever been since 1990. We should be inflated prime lending rate, and twice as high as interest for a conventional savings account. And we are so accustomed to inflation that our spending habits take it into account.
Kennedy's cure could kill the patient, but the patient might be on its deathbed already. At least his cure holds some hope for recovery.
Kansan misinterpreted poll results
To the Editor:
I was amazed to read the article entitled "Student Senate turnout lopsided" that appeared in the Feb. 25 Kansan. Because I am afraid many of your readers will fail to see the flicks presented in this article, I feel compelled to write this letter. I also would allow this article to have front page publicity, which adds to credibility.
I believe that the title of the article should have read, "Why did so many of the students vote for me?" sororities, and residence halls fail vote?" Upon examination of the list of polling places which were made available to the students, one quickly noticees that all of them voted. It is not favored. Seven of the nine residence halls had polling places set up in their lobbies during one of the two evenings (this includes seven of the residence halls residents voted. Ten different fraternities and sororites had polling seats, yet only 27.8 percent of their residents voted. Only 10.5 percent of their residents voted in polling places, but then one realizes that Frasher Hall, open all day on both days, is only half a block from all these halls. Still, what has happened to school spirit?
In comparison to the above figures, which came directly from the Kansas' election results, college students in ZERO polling places at their disposal. One might say that they should have voted while attending classes, lyzed, holds no water. How many polled places did you see in Learned Hall (Engineering), Murphy Hall (Fine Arts), Mayer Hall (Music), Lauley Hall (Law), Baley (Education), Find Hall (Journalism), Malott Hall (Pharmacy), or above schools are represented on the
Another reason why off-campus pupils failed to vote may be the following; they felt that it didn't matter whether they voted. There is only one seat on the Senate which is designated as representing the off-campus electorate, and 36 percent of representative out of one hundred and seven? Besides, it is obvious that with 40 percent of the polling places in fraternities and sororites and 36 percent of the polling places in residence halls and scholarship colleges, the people who are represented on the Student Senate, not the off-campus voters.
As you can see, I feel strongly about this issue and I was offended by the Kansan's view of the opportunities afforded them. I would say that the poor showering by the off-campus voters was not as pathetic as that of the rich who were sharing their fair share of choices to vote.
Student Senate. Why weren't they the students at these places? Including the Graduate School seats, where 6 people run for 24 seats, this amounts to a percent of the total seats on the bench.
Phillip Wilhelm
Lawrence sophomore
Senator, School of Engineering
Nuclear waste issue muddled in column
To the Editor;
Bob Pittman's Feb. 28 column on the storage of nuclear wastes was poorly conceived and a sophomore reaction to something he clearly does not understand. In contrast to attempts to "be levé" nuclear waste not with the fight 10 years ago to store "high"
First, this is not an attempt to store high level wastes from other states' nuclear research. Instead, the issue is whether we store the low-level nuclear wastes from cancer research and radioactive waste from our own worthy uses. These wastes are generated by
level'! wastes from nuclear power plants. The two situations are not comparable.
KANSAN letters
Second, unlike 10 years ago, the decision not to use in the hands a pro-nuclear bomber was made. The National Guard named an advisory group comprised of governors and state legislators from those states with potential waste storage sites to deal with the problem. Kansas San. Paul Hess was named vice chairman of the panel as this state's representative. He explained the problem, and does. The NRC cannot make the decision to open a dump in Kansas until the Presidential Commission has made a decision. The NRC cannot nuclear power, but unlike Mr. Pittman, it can factually distinguish between the two
such places as the KU Medical Center and Wesley Hospital in Wichita. It is ridiculous to contend that we should be unwilling to help children with special needs our own hospitals. Furthermore, I hear no outcry over the low-waste currently stored a more 18 miles away in DoeSho.
Mark Dickerson
Pasadena, Calif., law student
To the Editor:
One Vatican II document, "The Church in the Modern World," devotes one sentence to conscientious objection, commending laws that permit it. This commendation merely recognizes that the Church has legitimate conscientious claims and that nations should provide laws to exempt such persons. Quakers, for instance, should have no authority to refer any dies not refer to Catholicism, however.
Pope Pius XIII said that when a government is acting morally, "a Catholic covenant may not make an appeal to his own conscience as ground for refusing to give his services to fullfilled fixed by law. And" what does the right to service to the state and of the right to state to arm itself for self-defense are traditional doctrines of the Catholic Church.
Vatican II position cited by professor
James Scaly (Kansan, Feb. 25) claims that Vatican II overturned the traditional doctrine of consistent objection to military service. No doctrines even were considered by Vatican II because it was not a doctrinal law. It is a doctrine of Catholic Church does not reiterate its doctrine.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia article, written after Vatican II, reaffirms the traditional doctrine; so does the Rev. J. Courtney Murray, S.J., in his essay "Morality and Modern War." This is of particular interest, not only because he was a leading figure in the church but especially because he was the author of "The Church in the Modern World."
Dennis B. Quinn :
Dennis B. Quinn
Professor of English