MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2016
4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2003
TALKTOUS
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Jenna Goepfert and Justin Henning
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EDITORIAL BOARD
MU pot plan sets example for University
Breaking the law should have its consequences, but smoking pot shouldn't ruin a person's education.
On April 8, the voters of Columbia Mo., will vote on a city ordinance concerning the decriminalization of medicinal marijuana and reducing the penalties for being caught with less than 35 grams of marijuana.
Instead of facing a maximum penalty of $1,000 and possible jail time, the offenders will face a maximum $25 fine for a first offense, $50 for a second, $100 for a third and $500 for a fourth or subsequent offense.
Also, if University of Missouri students are caught with less than 35 grams of pot, they won't face losing their financial aid.
Now under the Higher Education Act of 1998, students convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs can be denied federal financial aid.
Imagine losing your scholarship over a parking ticket while even students convicted of violent crimes wouldn't lose their financial aid.
Now, KU students who are caught with pot can face a maximum penalty of a $2,500 fine, a little more than a year in jail and the possibility of losing their financial aid. The decision to eliminate a student's financial aid needs to be based on academic performance, not extracurricular activities.
In the last two years, more than 91,000 college students have lost their financial aid because of drug convictions.
The University of Kansas and the city of Lawrence should adopt an ordinance that doesn't jeopardize a person's education based on a lifestyle choice.
Jon Ralston for the editorial board.
Wes Benson for The University Daily Kansan
ISS essential for foreign students
PERSPECTIVE
When good people are beleaguered by bad publicity, supporters must stand up
and be counted.
Among the international students, this situation is no exception. A hacker downloaded data about international students, and we panicked and became critical of International Student Services.
Those of us who have much to be thankful to ISS for should stand up and support ISS. This is not just to motivate its tireless and very helpful employees, but also to count our blessings that ISS is not staffed by the nuts we keep hearing about in the news at other universities. Also, some of these employees are our own fellow international students
Anurag Pant
lkenderson@hansan.com
GUEST COMMENTARY
The International Student Services is a body set up at the University of Kansas for processing the documentation of international students. Technically, ISS is only supposed to verify if an international student has complied with immigration formalities. If I had to do this job, I would be intensely short-tempered and impatient with non-native English speakers. But ISS is not only experienced in tackling these issues, they also do it with great understanding and patience.
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In addition to new students, the staff at ISS also has to deal with hard-nosed INS officials, among others.
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I encourage all of our international students to express their thanks to these individuals whenever possible.
These are activities that the ISS does purely from its own altruistic motivation and from the point of view of bettering the life of the international students. For the argumentative ones among us: yes, the ISS does charge a fee for the orientation part of their services. But consider the pricier alternative. And what about ISS' contributions to the International Students Association where ISS coordinators have helped in an exemplary fashion?
With the new international students' monitoring system in place, most international students have been shielded from its very demanding requirements, precisely because of ISS. At the end of last year, the flurry of information sent from
This article is written to dispel the negative impression of ISS that some of you may have acquired because of the ongoing hacker problem. ISS is not any run-of-the-mill bureaucracy but is composed of very caring individuals to whom I am very thankful.
lies for international students, to donate furniture from Lawrence residents, to identify homes that host internationals during the many breaks and has now even begun organizing health insurance for international students. None of this needed to be done.
Pant is a Bombay, India doctoral candidate in business.
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Yes, the hacking is a serious incident which is exactly why so many authorities are investigating it. No, ISS doesn't deserve personalized criticism because it was not a deliberate act and because it made amends immediately by warning us and informing us of remedial measures.
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111 Stauffer-Flint
Once you reach a place that you will be living in for at least a year, you will realize how lonely it can get. Not everyone is endowed with the gifts of making friends easily in a new place. If personality is not the problem, language barriers can be.
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the ISS, with its international orientation program, offers all this and more. ISS coordinates with locals to find host fami-
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But, at least at KU, ISS staff members are more than just paper pushers. They receive international students, make them feel comfortable, organize their orientation, run these students to grocery stores, entertain them and provide that hand of support during the first few months that is so sorely needed. For anyone who has been to a foreign land, you will appreciate how much of a hassle it is to find a place to live in, especially if you have to pay hotel fees.
ISS, to keep us all in good status, is an indicator of how much proactive care they take. The other major official role of ISS is when we need work permits of different types whether it is a hardship permit or an optional practical training permit. The specific guidance we get during these times is praiseworthy.
PERSPECTIVE
Students go to great lengths to be cool
When I was at the KU-Arizona basketball game, I saw Arizona coach Lute Olson on
the sidelines.
He just might have been the coolest guy I've ever seen in my entire life.
He had the most beautiful platinum coif in the world, an impeccable double-breasted suit with brass buttons, and he walked like John Wayne going into a shootout.
I got to thinking, man I wish I could be that cool. But if I dressed and looked like that I would look like a bus boy on a cruise ship.
But someday, maybe someday, I will have it all together at one time like coach Olson and I could be half as cool as him
Whether we want to admit it or not, this drive to be cool is what drives us as college students and what drives most of America.
be cool. We buy DVDs, big televisions and sport utility vehicles to be cool. We go against the trends and conformity to be cool. We watch humiliating reality shows just to reinforce that we are cool. Everything that is advertised or sold to us has been researched for hours to make sure it is cool so people ages 18-35 will buy it.
We go to school to get a cool job. We stay on top of music and fashion trends to
COMMENTARY
For example, take the new MTV show MADE, in which MTV helps random
Eric Borja
opinion@kansan.com
people achieve an unlikely or nearly impossible goal. They have shown an overweight thespian who dreams of being a cheerleader, a dorky band that wants to be rock stars and a small and unathletic kid who wants to be on the varsity basketball team. But what these people truly want to be is cool, and MTV is happy to hook it up. If being in drama was cool in high school, then the girl wouldn't want to be a cheerleader.
The subject of "cool" is a very sensitive subject because for every person or thing that is cool, there is an equal or greater amount of people or things that aren't cool.
What is "cool" is also very subjective and open to different interpretations, but it is pretty universal that we all want to be it.
Our drive to be cool is like an endless circle. Once we think we have made it, trends and people have moved on.
This doesn't apply to just people,but all facets of life.The one thing that fascinates
me the most about college life is the whole "cool bar rotation."
You know what I'm talking about. One bar is the place to be on a certain night, and everyone wants to go there to see and be seen. But then that place gets old because too many people go there, and then, for some reason, another bar out of no where gets hot and everyone wants to go that place.
There are many types of cool. There is classy cool as exhibited by Lute Olson. There is Humphrey Bogart; the cold and distant cool. You can never forget the hipster / urban cool. And there is always the player / pimp cool beaten down on us by athletes and rock stars. Then there is the not-cool cool look as exhibited by Wes Anderson, Weezer or anyone with a mullet. I almost forgot the Filipino-columnist-chic look. I heard that look is real big on the East coast.
But in the end, we never really get there, and we all just got left behind in the trail of dust that is cool.
Then we are left with capri pants, lowcarb diets, a barb wire tattoo, a Hootie and the Blowfish album, an iMac and stocks of a bankrupt Web site.
But, as we all know, it's the effort that counts.
Borja is a Springfield, Mo., senior in journalism.
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we egged some guy's car in Oliver last night and people that were playing basketball watched us do it and didn't say a word about us egging his car. I think that's kind of weird.
My biznitch is the shiznit
--we egged some guy's car in Oliver last night and people that were playing basketball watched us do it and didn't say a word about us egging his car. I think that's kind of weird.
B
I was just curious when we elected Homer Simpson as our president. So how the hell did that big hole in the road at the top of 13th Street get there?
I don't know if you pedestrians know this, but there's a thing in this town called the sidewalk. If you could go ahead and use that, that'd be great.
we egged some guy's car in Oliver last night and people that were playing basketball watched us do it and didn't say a word about us egging his car. I think that's kind of weird.
望
The new Jayhawk Bookstore commercials are not retarded. It's about time Lawrence advertising started using something that's worthwhile. Good job, guys.
We need to make a retraction from yesterday's statement: we are also taking our third roommate, who owns the dishes, all the fish, a lot of other stuff, and she's the only other grocery shopper in the room, so now we have one lonely roommate.
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Make love; not war. Vote Democrat
To the person whose roommate said "like a butt spatula," what was the context of that, anyway?
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Fellatio instructions are incomplete Swallowing is a must.
How exactly do you take a steamy dump? Is there a trick to that?
The Kansan weekly specials suck. There are ten million better bars in Lawrence.
B
Excuse me, but who needs to join the other peace-loving nations? And who needs to get rid of their weapons of mass destruction?
Mr. Bush said you're with us or youre against us, so why don't we go bomb Germany and France now, too? And South Africa and Nelson Mandela. He doesn't agree.
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What President Bush can ruin in four years can last us the rest of our lives.
I find it funny that the most brilliant and educated woman I've met is also the most rabid anti-abortion I've met.
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Freedom: paid for by the men and women of the U.S. Army.
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I just read the article on oral sex in the Kansan Jayplay, and I'd just like to say that that writer is money with her statistics. It is just wonderful that someone of that stature knows exactly what to do.
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When me and my roommate see a girl on campus, we say we'd eat her. But what do girls say about attractive guys I wonder?
Hey, Mom and Dad, it's me, college is great, I'm getting a sex change.
When you don't sleep, you live longer.
This is to the douchebag that was dissing the troops the other day in Free For All. I hate war just as much as you do, but let me ask you this: are you out fighting for us? I don't think so. So don't kill the messenger. They're just doing their job protecting your ass. So to all the troops out there, thank you and we love you.
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Militarism is what perpetuates war, hatred, anger and fear. Just look at history.