B
4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
FRIDAY,APRIL 12,2002
EDITORIAL
Center should replace faulty KUIDs for free
The KU Card officials recently surveyed students on the use of KUIDs. Officials asked students for suggestions about improvements to card services, suggestions about new features and complaints. According to Diane Goddard, assistant associate provost and comptroller, one complaint shone through.
KUIDs fall apart.
KUIDs fall apart.
And when anything happens to a KUID, whether it be lost, stolen or split, the student is charged $15 for a replacement. Students are charged even if the card becomes damaged because of every day use or flaws in its quality.
After the KUID was implemented in 1998, a problem with the multi-purpose cards developed. The card stock had a tendency to split. The cards did not hold up to the strain of everyday use.
The supplier of the card stock agreed to accept the damaged cards. Students who took the front and back halves of their splintered KUIDs to the card center received a replacement without cost.
replacement without cost. While the KUID card stock has improved since then, some cards are still likely to split. Joanna Fewins, Redfield junior, had her KUID replaced after an ATM kept the front of her card. A KU Card Center employee told Fewins she would have to get the front of the card to receive a free replacement, or she would have to pay the replacement fee.
Nancy Miles, KU Card administrator, said there have been times where a KUID was replaced free of charge in cases such as Fewins'. This was often because of new staff members or student employees who were not familiar with Card Center policy.
Card Center policy. The bank has since mailed Fewins the front half of her KUID. But not every student may be as lucky if his or her card should happen to split or maybe even stolen.
card should happen to split a keyboard While it is understandable that students are charged for a new KUID in cases where they have caused damage to the card themselves, sometimes circumstances are beyond the control of students. The center should not charge students if they are not responsible for the damage or loss of their card.
their card. Students should let KU Card officials know that taking circumstances into account before charging a replacement fee would be an improvement to KUID services.
Donovan Atkinson for the editorial board.
free for
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they want comments. Str printed, Pho
to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com
What the hell happened to the Free for All today? You guys replaced it with a bunch of crap on Student Senate. That was the dumbest move ever.
图
What's up with the *Kansan* not ever printing anything about the KU men's lacrosse team? We're 7-1, and we're first in our division. I just thought I'd let everyone know, because we're probably going to win the championship this year, and no one's ever going to cover us.
--myself, where have you studied?
We as college students are always at war with our dark side. We are constantly questioning our conscience. Should I go out on a Tuesday when I have a test at 8:30 the next morning? Should I cheat on my girlfriend with a bodacious sophomore who just had six Smirnoff Ices? Should I watch Britney Spears' Las Vegas Concert on
Is it me, or did I just see a random, hot, drunk girl in a Raggedy Ann costume on campus?
Man, I had no idea Amelia Earhart was so hot. Do you think that if I vote for her she'll go out with me?
I was just watching Springer, and this guy who I thought was normal pulled off his clothes, and he had women's underwear on, and I just got to thinking, I wonder how many guys on campus that you walk by that look normal are really wearing women's underwear.
Why do all the stupid transfer students get to enroll before I do when I've already been here for two years? It doesn't make any sense.
So do you think the person that stole hosts from their church is going to go to hell?
Considering Raef Lafrentz and Paul Pierce are way better, I don't think Drew Gooden should have his number retired.
I'm watching the news right now, and I just wanted to know why Kansas City is funding a project to make parking lots more attractive to tourists, while arts and music programs are being cut from public education.
图
How do I get my lazy-ass roommate, who sits on the couch all day loudly kissing with her boyfriend, to get her ass up and leave, so I don't have to blast techno music in order to get a little studying done and not hear them?
I'm sitting here wrapping this box with gifts in it, except I looked over, and the gift's sitting on the couch.
TALKTOUS
Leita Walker
editor
864-4854 or iwaker@kansan.com
Jay Krail
Kyle Ramsey
managing editors
864-4858 or jkrail@ansan.com and
kramsey@ansan.com
Clay McCuisinion readers'representative 864-4810 or cmcusciinon@aansen.com
Amber Agee business manager 864-401 or edirector@kansan.com
Kursten Phels
Brooke Hesler
opinion editors
884-4810 Or kphelsen@kanan.com and
bhesler@kanan.com
Kate Mariani
retail sales manager
864-442 or
retailales@xansan.com
Matalcim Gibson
general manager and news
adviser
864-7867 or matalcim@mansan.com
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
864-7664 or mfharrer@kanan.com
PERSPECTIVE
The 'dark side' is moving in at KU, but there's nothing wrong with that
While my parents have spent thousands of dollars for an education at the University of Kansas, I have learned how truly ignorant I am. Everyone comes into college thinking they know everything and then — bam their lives are opened up to a world they never knew existed.
If there is one thing I have learned in college, it is that college and for that matter, life — is one big test.
The biggest test we face in college is not a final for a class, but our personal battle between good and evil.
I thought about this topic because recently I have seen so many people doing dumb things that I am beginning to think that the dark side is beginning to win the war over good. Right now I am watching an MTV Spring Break special, in which couples are trying to put as many kiss marks on each other as possible. And I am wondering to myself, where have all our morals gone?
COMMENTARY
Eric Borja
opinion@kansan.com
tape instead of go to class? Wait, that's just me
There are so many examples of how the dark side is taking over. A picture perfect example was at the University of Maryland. Maryland won the national championship in basketball, and the students celebrated by rioting and burning stuff. Maybe it's an East Coast thing, but where I come from celebrating usually doesn't involve defacing property and causing massive amounts of chaos to your own school.
amounts or chaos to you. Letting your demon out is good, though because the only way to keep your inner demons in check is to embrace your demon. You should pierce or tattoo your demon, watch women's bodybuilding with your demon or have your demon call the Free for All proposing marriage to the hottie who sits two rows back in Math 101.
But our daily struggle against the our darker forces run deeper than the usual after-hour affairs that I have been mentioning. It also includes greed, selfishness and dishonesty, and no matter how perfect we think we are, we always succumb to our own self interests in some way.
But is this dark side truly bad? Hell no.
But is this dark side true? So enough with all this make-the-world-a-better-place crap that we are fed every day. Go out and cause some chaos in your life. But don't wait, you must start letting go of all your inhibitions right now. Because after my most recent spring break trip, I realized that the window for being dumb and young is getting smaller. As you get older, partying hard and being immature starts to get interpreted as creepy, and then you become "that guy/girl."
become that guy go!
So you must get it out of the way before it's too late. I am not encouraging you to do something too crazy like get naked and smear yourself with peanut butter and walk to class. I am merely encouraging you to indulge in safe thrills. Whether that be watching a PG-13 movie or participating in "Freeball Friday," just sit back and let your dark reign supreme.
PERSPECTIVE
Borja is a Springfield, Mo., junior in journalism.
U.S. government fuels internal conflict in Colombia through its war on drugs
There is a human rights crisis in Colombia that continues to intensify and spread throughout the country, and which the U.S. government bears some responsibility for.
GUEST COMMENTARY
for. The decades-long conflict involving Colombian security forces, their paramilitary allies and armed opposition groups has been characterized by widespread and systematic abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law by both sides in the conflict.
Kyle Browning opinion@kansan.com
According to Amnesty International, during 2001, more than 5,000 people were killed for political motives, more than 300 people were victims of forced "disappearances," and more than 200,000 people were forcibly moved from their homes.
The U.S. government has fueled this conflict by providing military aid to Columbia, with no real interest in ending the violence consuming Colombia.
President Clinton enacted Plan Colombia under the guise of the "war on drugs," making Colombia the world's third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid. Bush's 2003 budget proposal includes $470 million for providing military training and equipment to Colombia. The Colombian military has close ties to tightwing paramilitary forces that commit 80 percent of the country's human rights abuses, and the largest paramilitary group was recently added to the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
Along with military aid, U.S.-sponsored fumigation efforts to eradicate coca cause health problems in farmers and have destroyed legal food crops, causing unemployment and starvation. The United States has bought 70,000 gallons of the plant killer Round-Up
Ultra from its manufacturer, Monsanto, for coca eradication, according to the San Francisco-based organization CorpWatch. Monsanto directly contributed $12,000 to Bush's campaign. Despite company and government claims that fumigation is harmless to humans, the less concentrated commercial Round-Up label warms that federal law prohibits "contact (with) workers or persons" and that "only protected handlers may be in the area during application."
cation. Instead of aid for alternative crop development or support for the millions of internally displaced people, Bush's budget proposal includes $98 million for protection of a 500 mile-long oil pipeline partially owned by California-based Occidental Petroleum, whose combined donations to both major political parties surpassed $300,000 in the last election cycle.
cycle. The Center for International Policy reports that Occidental's Caño Limón pipeline in Colombia has spilled more than 2.1-million barrels of oil because of sabotage by leftist rebels. Occidental and the US government have come under protest by the indigenous U'wa community for a Colombian military massacre of 18 civilians, including nine children, in the village of Santo Domingo in 1998.
Other companies that donate large amounts of money to both parties have benefited greatly from U.S. policy in Colombia as well. Defense companies United Technologies, Lockheed Martin and Textron have made more than $386 million in profits from Plan Colombia.
Colombia. The New York-based National Labor Committee also says U.S. military aid contributes to "genocide against unionists" in Colombia, as three-fifths of the world's murdered trade unionists are Colombian. Paramilitary forces perpetuate most of the assassinations of union organizers, and no one has been found guilty for such a murder.
Last year international attention was generated when three union leaders at the U.S.-based Drummond Coal Company were assassinated. Additionally, Coca-Cola has recently been sued in American courts by the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund for the torture, kidnap and murder of unionists at one of its Colombian bottling plants.
Bush's aid proposal to Colombia includes no money for economic and social aid, and will only fuel the conflict raging in this war-torn country. It is time for the U.S. government to reexamine its policy toward Colombia and other Latin-American countries, with the focus being on respect for human rights, democracy and justice—not profit.
Browning is an Overland Park senior in political science.