4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
EDITORIAL
FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2002
Keep KU officers here with better salaries
Safety on campus is a concern for students, but does the KU Public Safety Office have adequate funds and officers to maintain an acceptable level of safety?
Maj. Chris Keary of the KU Public Safety Office was quoted last semester in The University Daily Kansan ("Low income leads officers elsewhere," Dec. 3) as saying it had been a problem that well trained officers were leaving for better paying jobs. He said the KU Public Safety Office was often short of staff because of the high rate of turnover.
A reason for this problem is that University officers can get better paying jobs at other police departments. They receive their training at the University, and then leave for more money. University officers start out making $24,928, but officers in other nearby cities can start out making as much as $33,634 as they do in Lenexa.
If we want quality officers, we must give them quality pay. Officers have to support themselves, and we as a university cannot expect them to stay at the KU Public Safety Office if they can make more at a different police department.
The Kansan reported ("KU Public Safety Office hurt by fewer officers," Feb. 5) there were 24,400 students here with 37 commissioned officers in 1984. Now there are more than 25,400 students here with only 28 commissioned officers.
Although more people on campus might not lead to more crime, it doesn't mean crime will go down either.
The University has 11.0 officers per 10,000 students,the second lowest number in the Big 12.Oklahoma State University has 14.6 officers per 10,000 students,the highest of the Big 12.
With budget shortfalls, it might be unrealistic to demand a raise for our officers, but if the University doesn't consider raising salaries of officers at some point, the trend of trained officers leaving will only continue.
Sara Zafar and Brooke Hesler for the editorial board.
FRIDAY FACEOFF
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Student Senate seats reserved for multicultural groups is exclusive
When my editor asked me to write about Student Senate seats that were to be set aside for certain organizations, I thought I was being asked to comment on a ludicrous proposal brought before the Senate. Little did I know, this was a bad idea that had already snugly secured itself in the Senate rules. Here's the breakdown of the Senate seats, for those of you who haven't found the time to peruse the Senate Web site.
peruse the Senate工作会议.
Fifty-seven representatives are elected from the schools, such as the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the school of journalism. One representative is chosen for residence halls, five for off-campus, three non-trads, and three holdover senators are elected by their friends in the Senate. There is one each for the scholarship halls, the Association of University Residence Halls, the Interfraternity Council, the Panhellenic Association, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the International Students Association, the Black Student Union, the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, the First Nations Student Association, the Asian American Student Union and Queens and Allies.
Robert Chamberlain opinion@kansan.com
COMMENTARY
There's a plan floating around that would eliminate the 11 organizations' seats, the three holdover seats and the six residence hall and off-campus seats. Instead, 60 to 80 senators would be directly elected from their school.
This plan, while eminently sensible, has run into considerable opposition from well-intentioned multiculturalists. They assert that these 19 allocated seats bring important diversity to the Senate, but their argument lacks firm ideological bedrock upon which they could found an objection.
The distribution of seats seems to be more than a little ad hoc. If living arrangements really have some important quality about them that requires their explicit representation, why does the greek community have more seats set aside than the residence or scholarship hall communities? Why aren't living community seats based on the number of students that have a particular living arrangement instead of a fixed allotment? These seats aren't justified and ought to be eliminated.
The designation of groups that bring minority representation seems ad hoc as well. If the goal is to represent ethnicities, why doesn't the Cultural India Club get a seat? Why don't the Korean, Indonesian or Bengali clubs get seats? Why are ethnicity and sexual orientation the only tests
applied to these set-aside seats? After all, religion and gender are also included in the preamble to the Senate rules. I'm sure that the KU Navigators, KU Hillel Foundation, Wiccan Pagan Alliance, Society of Open-Minded Atheists and Agnostics, and the February Sisters all have something to add.
The desire to include minority groups is laudable, but setting aside seats for a half dozen clubs doesn't seem like the way to do it. Without any kind of systematic assessment of how and why certain groups are included, the groups selected will remain stagnant and, in the name of diversity, will marginalize other minority groups by implicitly saying that, their ethnicity/religion/gender is important, but it's not enough to merit a seat.
After all, according to the logic of set-aside proponents, set-asides are necessary for inclusion, inclusion is necessary for diversity, and diversity is necessary for the University. According to this reasoning, by denying some groups set-asides, the proponents thwart the very end they seek to accomplish.
There are two ways to fix this government by ad hocracy. One would be to adopt a mind-boggling complex system of proportional representation based on vote, club membership, student profile or some other index that would better foster the involvement of small parties in the Senate. This strikes me as a lot of work that, in the end, may produce a system no better than the current one. The other technique would be to take a deep breath and realize that even without the special set-aside seats, there is diversity in Student Senate.
The set-aside seats may have seemed like a good idea when the rules were written. But it is easy to see that they are unrepresentative, unsystematic and, ultimately, unnecessary. We've come a long way as a society. It's time for Student Senate to catch up.
Senate was right three years ago, do not move backward now
I'm not out to call Student Senate a racist group. In fact, I covered Senate as a University Daily Kansan reporter a few semesters back, and I'd venture to say the vast majority of its members try to do the right thing — make the best decisions for the University when Senate passes and fails bills, petitions and resolutions.
Right now, Senate has started a discussion on how seats should be apportioned; in other words, who represents whom. And an interesting idea was brought up — eliminating seats set aside for "multicultural organizations" such as Black Student Union, Asian American Student Association, Hispanic American Leadership Organization and the First Nations Student Association.
As the University tries to create a more diverse campus. Student Senate took a brave step three years ago by instituting these "multicultural" seats. Black Student Union, AASU, FNSA, Queers & Allies and HALO select one individual each to serve as their student senators.
Chamberlain is a Topeka senior in political science.
The arguments for ridding Senate of such representatives makes sense in a perfect world: We should elect representatives at-large that would be fair and act on our behalf, regardless of our race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other social standard.
But we, my friends, do not live in a utopian society, or even attend a perfect University. According to the Office of Institutional Research and Planning, last fall, black students constituted only 2.6 percent of the total enrollment at the Lawrence and Edwards campuses. That figure didn't budge from last year, and it actually dropped by .2 percentage points from Fall 1999.
The numbers aren't much better, and in many cases, are worse, for Native Americans, Latinos and Asian students. Nearly 81 percent of the students on this campus classify themselves as white.
Although the BSU or HALO senator shouldn't be expected to speak for every black or Latino student on this campus, these seats have helped issues and concerns from these groups find a voice in Senate.
COMMENTARY
If these seats were eliminated, would minorities still be able to be in Senate? Sure. I would hope that voters aren't blatantly racist, and indeed, the student body has elected a black student body vice president and a black president in the past two years. I don't think things would have been any different without multicultural Senate seats.
Kursten Phelps
kphelps@kansan.com
But why on earth should Senate or anyone on this campus take a step that might counteract the valuable and hard-earned, if not minimal, progress we have made towards more diversity and better cultural understanding?
Granted, setting aside seats for some groups but not others is exclusive. But Senate, politics and life are not perfect nor perfectly fair. It's just not realistic to set aside a seat for every group out there. This may not make sense in theory, but in reality, small steps toward progress are better than nothing at all, or worse, steps backward.
Let's remember that this is higher education. Our goals should not be to mimic perfectly the "real world," especially in politics, where women and minorities are woefully underrepresented. Rather, we should strive to create a place for underrepresented groups, with the hope that some day, we won't have to set aside a special place for them.
Indeed, one day, Senate should get rid of multicultural seats. Some day, we shouldn't need or want to guarantee a spot for minorities in student government. Some day, voter turnout at student elections will be high, and KU students will elect a mosaic of senators to fairly represent everyone.
Sadly, that day is not today. Senate was right three years ago to institute set-aside multicultural seats, and it should not abandon them yet.
Phelps is a Manhattan senior in journalism, Spanish and Latin American studies.
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For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
So Vegas' odds on the NCAA tournament for winning it is Duke has 6-5 odds and Kansas has 3-1. What's up with that?
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I just saw a commercial on HBO for the Mathew Shaped movie that's going to be on. I think it was HBO, and they showed Fred Phelps, or actually an actor who was playing Fred Phelps, and he's wearing a KU Jayhawks jacket. It kind of sucks when Fred Phelps' trademark clothing is a Jayhawk jacket, kind
of Darth Vader's helmet or Charlie Brown's T-shirt.
this is to that frat boy that thinks that Greeks have a higher GPA than anyone else on campus, yeah right. Schol hallers have got you whipped on that one.
Curtis Dixon is my hero. Tim Lang's anti-sex-sense marriage article was just complete crap. It's fine if you don't like homosexuality, but don't even try to pass off that there's any foundations for your argument, Timmy.
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Hey genius, Student Senate allocates money for lots of things besides Gay Pride Week. What do you expect them to do, invest it and give you the returns? Take your homophobia back to your rural, kick towns
I'd just like to ask the girl's basketball team, how does it feel to get the same treatment that the football team's been getting the last several years?
Don't you think that when we call KU Info and ask them to read us a bedtime story they should just read us a dang bed time story? I mean come on, what's up with that, man?
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There are three things that I look forward to every day of my life: the crossword puzzle, the Free for All and the possibility of seeing KU basketball players on campus.
Would you like your salad tossed with jam or jelly?
If somebody accidentally threw mashed potatoes on you a few days ago would you still be mad at them? I'd be over it by now.
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How can it be that I can finish a New York Times crossword puzzle, but I can't finish the University Daily Kansari's crossword puzzle? It's absolutely ridiculous.
I really don't think that a genetically engineered embryo is analogous to any form of asexual reproduction. Nice try.
So Vegas' odds on the NCAA tournament for winning it is Duke has 6-5 odds and Kansas has 3-1. What's up with that?