2019
University Daily Kansan, April 24, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USP$ 624-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Staffer Flint Hall. Lawen, Kanze $6045, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and third periods Second class postage paid at Lawen, Kanze $6044. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $2 per year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student postage is $10 per student and addresses change to the University Daily Kansan, 118 Staffer Flint Hall. Lawen, Kanze $6045
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A good move
All too often the positive steps and reforms that arise from the dust of a crisis or controversy are overlooked. Last week David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs, proposed in a letter to the Student Senate that a commission be formed to consider establishing minimum standards of conduct for students who represent the University.
students who represent the University. The proposal comes on the heels of the Senate's long debate over the proposed $2 sports fee and the status of football player Roderick Timmons, who last spring was convicted of sexual battery but later was allowed to return to the team.
Some senators said Timmons should not be permitted to represent the University. Their attempts to cut the $2 sports fee unless Timmons was removed from the team failed, but out of the concern came Ambler's proposal.
The recent allegations against football players of assault make the plan even more timely.
The commission is a starting point. It offers no solutions to the problem, but rather proposes to evaluate what standards — if any — should be set, how they would be enforced and to whom they would apply. Faculty, students and staff would compose the commission, which would work through the summer and have recommendations prepared by the fall semester.
semester.
The commission is a good idea, and it deserves the support of the Senate, the administration and the faculty. The questions it must deal with are broad-ranging and difficult. The danger cannot be ignored that the commission could overstep its bounds by setting up a bureaucracy that would overlap the normal judicial process and unfairly punish students. Raising the specter of "in loco parentis," the doctrine by which universities once claimed sweeping power over students, would set back the clock of student rights by 20 years.
Many of the specifics in setting standards of conduct need to be hammered out, and that is the point of the commission. The need for such standards, however, has become painfully apparent in the past year. The unwillingness of some areas of the University to discipline their own members makes the need even more pressing.
need even more pressing. The commission's task is difficult, but the philosophy that should guide it is clear: Representing the University is a privilege, and with this privilege comes responsibility. Those who act without responsibility forfeit their privilege.
'Ay'referendums
There is a bill afoot in the Student Senate that would prohibit students from voting to cut off funds for any student organization.
The proposal was drafted in response to a student petition circulated last fall that called for a student vote to deny funds to the Gay and Lesbian Services of Kansas. In their efforts to protect controversial groups like GLSOK from discrimination, the sponsors of the bill are placing an important democratic right in jeopardy.
But that specific bill is not nearly as important as the dangerous precedent it could set against all student referendums.
The fear of student referendums is justified to a certain extent in light of the bungling that characterized the GLSOK petition.
However, the greatest point of contention on the referendum issue is whether or not students should be permitted to overrule the senators and express a "tyranny of the majority."
Many senators dislike the referendum process in which students strip them of their power to decide issues. Senators see it as a lack of faith.
This may be taking the matter a little too personally, but senators do have a legitimate complaint. The convoluted petition-referendum sequence can easily cripple the legislative process — if it is overused or abused.
Referendums cannot be thrown out entirely, though, for they are a part of the democratic process, which Student Senate is supposed to reflect. That "tyranny of the majority" is the same group that elected the senators to their seats.
The senators are representatives of the students. They are supposed to vote as their student constituents would have them vote. And if the senators can't reach a decision, then they should let the students decide. Tabling issues is no solution.
solution.
Guidelines need to be established. In setting up a coherent policy, senators should look beyond the controversial GLSOK issue and consider the referendum process on its own merits
A petition is now required to have signatures from 10 percent of the student body in order to bring an issue to a campus vote. A 15 percent signature requirement might insure sincere and diverse interest in a petition.
The Elections Committtee must work diligently with the administration to develop unbiased means of verifying names and bringing an issue to ballot.
Colombian sojourn beckons graduate
names and bringing an issue to ballot Students must retain their right, through petition, to call for a general vote.
The road to Colombia, South America, lies before me. As glorious spring days slip away, my departure date inches closer, and once more I find myself contemplating what it has been born with a restless heart
Travel is a wonderful thing, in the abstract.
In concrete ways, it means having to figure out air fares and the exact day that I will travel. It is looking at everything that I want to take with me and then resigning myself to the limitations of my suitcases.
Leaving the country also means hassling with visas and money exchanges and medical precautions.
Staying away for a year or more multiplies the details. While I can get by without certain things for a month or two, then I will go back during a longer stay. I choose carefully the books that I can take, special photographs and a few mementos that will remind me of home.
good as the experiences that are left behind.
But the physical preparations are not even so difficult to handle, if only my mental and spiritual preparations for the journey would fall into place.
That is the difficult part of travel, to convince oneself that the experiences that lie ahead will be at least as
I go through my days now,
conscious of how secure the way is in
time.
On the road, the little things once taken for granted are acutely oblivious.
There will be trying moments not figuring out how systems,
MARGARET
SAFRANEK
Staff Columnist
different from the ones I am used to work. Some seem simple. Mailing a letter, buying groceries, or locating a shoe repair shop should be manageable.
But there will be no getting around the hassles of the bureaucracy when I need to enroll in school or extend my visa.
Yet even those things can be dealt with somehow.
What seems unbearable at times is the incredible loneliness that comes during a year away.
While loneliness is not limited to those on the road, the feelings there
are more acute. At home, in familiar surroundings, it is possible to find a friend or a place or a pursuit that will ease some of the loneliness. Not so in a new place where few things bear any resemblance to the familiar.
The uneasiness of facing the unfamiliar wears away at me, and occasionally I contemplate alternatives that would provide the security that I know I am abandoning in choosing to go rather than to stay.
But somewhere inside me, in the deepest recesses of my heart, the urge to move on lifts my spirits long before I can back to the preparations at hand.
I there is some comfort in the words of a friend who seeks to reassure me as my tears bear witness to my mixed emotions. "If you don't want to go," he says, "you don't have to go."
Yet, in isolation of me, go I must, in hopes of quelling a restless heart that will not let me stay in one place for all of us. Yet, in isolation always tells me when my time is up.
Some people think that I am going to Colombia to learn all about Colombia.
That is one of my concrete goals. I will study Spanish and Colombian culture, learn about the people, the
government and the way of life in South America.
But there is much more to my going than that.
With my traveling spirit, the destination could be any other place and I would still be taking to the road.
There are things inside of me that I have to know. It is a time for me to call up many of the things that have occurred in my life in the secure world of academia.
I will have my patience tried and my faith tested in different ways. My values will be challenged and my way of life turned upside down.
But I will prevail. It won't be the comfortable routine that I know so well here at home. But it will be an experience that will stretch my mind, my heart and my spirit in new ways.
There are those who think that people travel to learn more about other places and people, and perhaps there is some of that to be gained.
But I am going not so much to learn about South America as I am to learn more about myself. And perhaps Colombia will help.
Habit of search and enjoy
Book browsing leads to good stories
I've developed it in a small, almost like an underground thing to do. That shouldn't be the case, but unfortunately it is.
What I do is this: I pick out a new hardcover novel — not a famous blockbuster or one that's had all kinds of favorable reviews — and I flip through it. I try to make sure it's by an author I know nothing about — and preferably that it's his or her first book. If it looks as if it might interest me, I take it home and I read it
Now, I'm sure there was a time when this wasn't such an unusual thing to do. The idea of browsing for a new book was part of America's culture. Walking into a bookstore and spending time among the new selections, looking for something that might strike one's fancy, was a regular part of life.
That's all. Pretty simple.
Today, things don't work quite that way. By the time a person passes through the front door of a bookstore, the chances are pretty good that he has at least some idea of what he might buy. The marketing of books has become just as important as the writing and editing of books.
The ug took publishers make sure you have seen their most prominent titles in advertisements, have seen and heard their authors on television and radio talk shows, and have read reviews in the big newspapers and national magazines. The point of all this is to have a bookstore, a bookshelf, a bookstore, see a particular book, and say, 'Ah. I know about that one. Maybe I'll try it.'
That's not what I'm up to. What I've been doing lately is wandering among the shelves of new fiction and spending the time to pick the books up, read the jacket copy and sample what's inside.
I promise myself that I won't
necessarily take home a book by an author I know anything about. The only rule is that if the book seems like something that might be worth devoting a good part of a weekend to, then maybe I'll give it a chance
Part of this is in reaction to a letter to the editor I read in a news magazine. The magazine had devoted a big story to videotape
BOB
GREENE
Syndicated
Columnist
recorders. A reader had written to say that he had begun to replace the books on his bookshouses with videotapes of old movies.
I didn't like reading that letter. Videotapes are fine, but a book is different. A good novel feels like a long letter that someone has written to you, revealing seeming truths. Roughly a sentimental value. Roughly a good novel is a one-on-one experience that a movie can never quite duplicate.
You read a novel at your own pace slowly when you want, quickly when you want. When everything works right, you feel as if you are actually inside the book. When you've finished, you wish you could meet the author and talk for a while
Near the beginning of this story, I mentioned that I've been reading hardcover novels. I specified hard-covers for a reason. They're more expensive than paperbacks, but they're new — most novels come out in hardcover first.
More importantly, they haven't been judged yet by the paperback reprinters. By the time a book makes it to paperback, its marketability has
been evaluated by the paperback houses. A lot of very good fiction never makes it to paperback because the paperback publishers don't consider it commercial enough.
So I wander around the new hardback fiction, and sometimes it gets pretty lonely. The book-publishing business is supposed to be a billet-dollar industry, but I'll tell you some things first. I am browsing among the new hardcover novels, I never seem to have a whole lot of company.
Here are a couple of new hardcover novels that I've liked. "Heroes," by David Shields, is a first novel about a sportswriter who lives in a small Iowa town and dreams of making it big one world of the Milwaukee kee尔 journal.
England who is an Elvis Presley impersonator — even before Presley's death.
He is a former basketball player and now he lives out his dreams that are fading fast. The sportswriter's young son is a diabetic, his wife is threatening to become more successful than he is — and somehow, in the midst of all this, he is trying to find the soul he once knew he had
Another book I liked a bit is "Stark Raving Elixis, a first novel by William McCranor Henderson. This is about a seeming loser from New York."
When Elvis dies, the man's life begins to take twists and turns that eerily and comically mirror the things that happened to Presley, himself. By the book's end, the man is in Las Vegas, playing before the same people who used to flock to see Elvis.
And maybe part of this has to do with the fact that there weren't 40 million other people thinking about these characters and these stories at the same time I was. One thing about looking for new novels that you hear about is they often feel like a private pleasure, and there aren't so very many of those available to a person these faves.
These may not be novels that are destined to wind up as miniseries. A frustrated 19th century sportswriter nearing his 40th birthday and an Elvis Presley imitator from New England are not the sorts of characters that network executives choose to place before 40 million people on a Sunday night. But the stories interested me and moved me and made me think.
LETTERS POLICY
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. The Kansan also invites individuals and groups to submit guest-collaborations and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.