4A - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2003
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Kristi Henderson editor
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Jenna Goepert and Justin Hennings managing editors
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readers'representative
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Amanda Sears and Lindsay Hanson
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Campus relies on whistle
The steam whistle is out again - it blew 25 feet into the air. Without its
piercing noise, campus is left in an earie silence.
The whistle needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Fortunately, the Kansas University Endowment Association has set up a fund to offset the cost of a new whistle.
This is an excellent fund for students to support. Although it deafens students leaving Blake Hall at 10:20 a.m., the whistle does serve an important purpose.
Some of our distinguished professors have served the University for years. During their careers educating bright-eyed Jayhawks many must have misplaced their watches. They've become dependent on the whistle to tell them when it's time to conclude lectures in each class.
We need that whistle so the overextension of one stimulating class does not lead to tardiness in the next.
According to representatives of Facilities Operations, it could be a few weeks before the whistle is replaced. But far be it for anyone to cast blame on Facilities Operations, especially in light of the department's history of timely snow removal.
Instead of complaining, send a few dollars to the new Endowment fund by visiting kuendowment.org. You'll get to enjoy a deafening reminder of your charity by the hour.
Matt Pirotte for the editorial board.
The Kansan welcomes letters to the editors and guest columns submitted by students, faculty, and alumni.
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The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Amanda Sears or Lindsay Hanson at 864-4924 or e-mail at opinion@kansan.com. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the readers' representative at readersrep@kansan.com.
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111 Strauffer-Flint
WADE'S VIEW
r
Jennifer Wade for The University Daily Kansas
PERSPECTIVE
Terrorists win in hidden ways
Patrick Henry once said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." This bold statement summed the feelings of the brave rebels who gladly endangered their lives for the opportunity for freedom more than two centuries ago. It is nothing short of remarkable that these fearless souls would build a legacy of politicians who would gladly fork over every freedom they could surrender at the first hint of danger.
Since Sept. 11,2001,the president. Congress and the attorney general have engineered a frightening series of challenges to the rights of noncitizens.In doing this,they've jeopardized the system of checks and balances that has kept our government working for more than 200 years.
A secretive immigrant hunt that has been compared to the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II began after that infamous date. By November 2001,1,147 immigrants, mostly from the Middle East and South Asia, had been taken into custody with little explanation. (The Justice Department stopped providing the number of
COMMENTARY
people detained shortly thereafter.)
Sam Lane
opinton@kansan.com
A month later, the Justice Department authorized prison officials to monitor communications between detainees and their lawyers without court order.
These measures essentially allow immigrants to be shipped off to gulag with even the accusation of terrorism and sometimes without even that much. Tearing away the rights of immigrants to fair trials is by appearance an outright attack on the power of the judicial system, one of only three branches of government that keeps our democracy from becoming a dictatorship. If this mockery of due process is restricted to noncitizens, it is more insidious. It sets the precedent that an immigrant is considered less of a person than a citizen, and doing this undermines the ideals of equality and inalienable rights that this nation was based on.
When the terrorists, the real ones, planned their suicide attacks they surely could not have known how they would succeed. They scared politicians into sacrificing everything American on the altar of security. The odds of anyone on American soil being killed by terrorists is still about a billion to one, yet our leaders strip us of our rights as fast as they can type up the legislation. The odds of dying in a car wreck are still vastly greater, but where is the CIA when we need our highways scrutinized?
Our founding fathers are surely looking down on us in shame as we throw away all that they fought and died for. And when the government is stripped of its last check and balance and degenerates into an autocracy, Osama — if he's still alive — will spend the rest of his life laughing.
Lane is a Leavenworth senior in psychology
'Kansan' report card
Pass:
The Hawk's Nest. It's open on the first floor of the Kansas Union. Go play. Play with a frothy latte
Fail:
The women's basketball team. Congratulations on defeating Texas A&M to break the 21-name losing streak.
- "Transition to Teaching." The University will help ease the teacher shortage in Kansas City, Kan., schools by training liberal arts graduates to be teachers.
■ "Nucular." it's n-u-c-l-e-a-n. Hooked on Phonics did not work for President Bush.
- Increasing the price of sports packages. As if having to pay for tickets to football games wasn't bad enough.
Rushing the court. We beat a conference rival. There's no excuse for that kind of behavior — unless you are a Colorado fan.
Free for All
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For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
available online, creating files for downloading electronic copies of books, just as you would music on Napster, KaZAa, Gnutella, eDonkey and others.
We wanted to forewarn our roommates that we're planning to move out as soon as there's room available, so you might want to consider investing in a coffee maker, a DVD player, a TV, a microwave, a refrigerator, a couch, blankets, two phones, wall decorations, a lamp, a VCR, a CD player, a bathroom clock, the carpet, a Lazy Boy, and a Sugar Daddy, because we won't be there to buy your food anymore. But on the bright side, you'll have more room.
[ ]
I just heard Bush say that many suspected terrorists in countries around the world have been arrested while others have met a "different fate," and I think this is the part that will give me nightmares; he added with a sly grin, "Let's just say they won't be a problem to America anymore." Evill
To the dude who answered my friend's lost cell phone: "I'll see you Thursday, and my weekend's open.
Who are these people who actually think that Iraq is going to attack America? Is there going to be an invasion? What? What's going to happen?
图
Has anyone noticed that President Bush's nose looks just like Beavis' nose?
I just saw a commercial for Kotex Pantyliner Pads with readjustable wings, and all I have to say is, if you're wearing your pad long enough that you need to readjust the wings, you have issues.
图
图
To the woman who argued that abortion is okay because monkeys use herbs to prevent pregnancies. Yeah, well monkeys sling crap at each other all day. Does that make it OK?
To the guy that said that the armed forces and reserves are spreading fear, just remember that when we're out there protecting your right to say that, that you're dissing us and you're not doing a damn thing.
图
So our government is about ready to go to war in our name, and we're allowing it to happen. We're so sedated. When's the revolution?
前
My roommate just used the phrase "like a butt spatula."
PERSPECTIVI
Start thinking of music as a cultural commodity
A federal court ruling last week paved the way for the music industry to sue those who make copyrighted songs available for download from home computers, reinvigorating the debate over illegal online song swapping. It recalled to mind an idea my freshman-year roommates and I discussed ac we downloaded hordes of free music in Lewis Hall. The idea is this: America's public libraries need to adopt a system of online file-sharing.
GUEST COMMENTARY
Jay Krall opinion@hansan.com
Just imagine the country's more than 9,000 public libraries, many of them underfunded by local property taxes, having multiple copies of nearly every book written. Then imagine the library delivering books right to your house. Your mom would give the book carrier a holiday greeting card every year just as she does for the letter carrier and the paper boy.
Obviously, this is a foolish dream of an intellectual utopia in which taxpayers hand over piles of cash in the name of reading and learning.
Let's consider a more modern version of the concept. Make the library's catalog
Or is it?
While more libraries, particularly at universities, are offering free e-books, most community libraries have yet to get on board. Publishers shudder at the thought of the effect public e-libraries could have on the sales of old-fashioned ink-and-paper books. The same concept has sent the recording industry, from Nashville to Los Angeles, shaking in its boots about online file sharing. Though the industry is already experimenting with pay-to-play download services, let's face it: As long as free services are around, record companies won't make
In the wake of Napster's demise, forward-thinking record company executives discussed cashing in on Internet file swapping by setting up their own file-sharing services for profit. But that was almost two years ago.
The system might work like this: The federal government creates a Napster-like service, for which users pay a monthly fee and download unlimited amounts of music. The money is then redistributed to artists' labels in proportion to the number of users who download the songs. When 12 million people download the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Flea and company get paid more than Rusty Hudelson's Yodeling yodeling duets for his unsuccessful new release. That would appease even Metallica, whose members pleaded with Congress last summer to rein over the Napster copycats.
They still don't have their acts
big bucks selling songs for download. That leaves me wondering. In the face of technology, why not treat music as a cultural commodity and turn online music sharing over to government regulators?
Going a step further, we could make the service free and subsidized with taxes. The demand exists. More than 40 million Americans, about one-fifth of the adult population, have downloaded free music online, according to a survey conducted last June by Ipsos-Reid, a Minneapolis market-research firm.
It sounds silly to give tax money to huge media companies until you consider that America's public libraries spent almost $1 billion on their collections in 2000, according to the federal Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. Much of that tax money is headed into the deep pockets of big publishing houses such as Random House and Simon and Schuster Inc.
together. It's time we demand that the federal government step in.
But most taxpayers are OK with that. Our society views books as a cultural commodity, which everyone has rights to regardless of whether they can afford it. We don't think of music in that way, but we should.
Krahl is a Bartlett, Ill., senior in journalism
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