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University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, February 5, 1992
OPINION
Finding reason for life eases prospect of death
I was home in South Dakota for the holidays. My parents were reminiscing about old friends, and I realized I had forgotten a lot of the people I used to know. One of these people was a girl named Joanie. Her name struck a chord, but I could not put a face or anything to her. As the days went by, remembrances of Joanie drifted back to me. But they were strange things. I remember she died. She was about 11 years old. She had diabetes, but it wasn't discovered in time. I didn't know what diabetes was; I thought it was a form of diarrhea (probably the prefix connection), and I recall thinking it was a pretty awful way to die.
My brother used to call diarrhea, "Diane Korea." This used to just slay my parents, and he never was sure why they found this condition so funny. "Diane Korea" took on a new form to me when we moved into our "blue house," where I spent most of my childhood.
Two doors down was a little girl named Diane, who had sort of Asian features, so I thought of her as "Diane Korea" for a long time. Diana was
Kate
Kelley
staff
columnist
killed in a car accident a year after she graduated from high school. It's always been curious to me how diarrea could have so unwittingly been related to two deaths.
As I was wondering why my thoughts had turned so morbid, another childhood death leapt from some drawer in my mind. The boy, Brady, who lived across the street from us, was one of those weird children your parents tell you to stay away from. My brother found him interesting because he was always making inventions. He built a tree house in the field behind his house.
One day he climbed up there, poured gasoline all over himself and the tree house, and then lit a match. I think he
intended to die then but didn't count on it being so painful; he screamed. Another neighbor, a police officer, heard the screams, ran out and rescued Brady from the fire. The officer was a hero in town for a long time, but I wondered if he sometimes thought he'd done the wrong thing. The boy went through several skin-graft operations and was always in pain. About two years later, he went into an old abandoned farm house and hung himself from a rafter. This time he made sure there would be no one around to hear any screams.
Why at Christmas time was my mind so full of something as awful as the death of children? guess when we start looking back at the soft lights of our past, they are always accompanied by shadows and dark corners. Sometimes we need to look into these dark places and understand how they touched our lives. Deaths are a little easier to accept if we can see some reason for life in the first place.
Kate Kelley is a Fort Leavenworth junior majoring in English.
THE UNIVERSITYDAILY KANSAN
Students should hail mail-in
New fee-payment program should benefit KU students, but does not lift responsibilities
For those of you who enjoy the social aspects of standing in long lines, shuffling from one building to the next and standing in more lines, just for the pleasure of paying your last dimes for your education, the news of the new fee payment mail-in program may not be as welcome as it is to the rest of us.
Beginning with Fall 1992, students who enroll in the spring will be able to mail in their fee payments by the first week of August. This is good news to the multitudes of students who have summer jobs and could use the extra week to earn money to pay for those fees.
For the University, the benefits include having three weeks to adjust class-size needs. Those who enroll in the spring and
change plans in the summer can be dropped from the rosters before classes begin. This could be a blessing for those of us who often must wait two weeks to find out if we can add a needed class.
With this new privilege will come a responsibility for the student. Payments must be received by the University by the first week of August. Missing the deadline will mean being dropped from the enrollment process. "The check's in the mail" excuse will not hold up when so many payments are due at the same time. It will be imperative to get those checks mailed as soon as possible. With the reputation of the U.S. Postal Service, it may not hurt to insure and register these remittances as well.
The mail-in system has been in use at many other universities and has been very successful. It is up to this University's students to ensure that it works well here, too.
Attorney general should quit
Kate Kelley for the editorial board
Bob Stephan's legal problems have stripped him of the ability to perform his job efficiently
On Jan. 29, Kansas Attorney General Bob Stephan was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of perjury and one count of conspiracy to commit perjury. This marks the latest in a series of courtroom appearances by Stephan not related to his position as Kansas' highest legal officer, including a case of sexual harassment. This, though, should be the last chapter. Bob Stephan should resign.
Stephan, like everybody else, is innocent until proven guilty. But his legal problems have become such a distraction that he can no longer execute his office according to the oath he took. Stephan is entrusted by the people of Kansas to apply the law to every individual. Defending yourself and representing the state are two full-time jobs. He cannot do both.
More than that of any other public officer,
the attorney general's honesty and integrity should be beyond reproach. Stephan's outside legal problems will only distract him from his real job of prosecuting criminals. How can someone attempt to apply laws that he himself is accused of breaking?
The best imaginable option would be for Stephan to suspend himself during the time that it takes to resolve his legal problems. However, Kansas law doesn't provide for that possibility.
Gov. Finney has questioned Stephan's ability to perform his duties, and talk has spread in the Legislature about impeaching him. Anything like that would create a partisan battleground in the Legislature.
Before that occurs, Stephan should examine his ability to continue. The state and its people shouldn't be subjected to anything but the best in legal advice and counsel. I hope Stephan will decide that the best interests of the state of Kansas would be served by his resignation.
Stephen Martino for the editorial board
U.S. should alter stance
Lettersto the editor
With the exception of a few occasions on which he seemed deliberately deceptive or mean-spirited, George Bush has always struck me as a principled individual who honestly believes that America, by virtue of its democratic society and its position of power, is the greatest nation on earth and should exert influence accordingly; and that Americans are great people whom he respects and cares for.
My generation was born in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, and for most of us the country is a different place.
He is also misguided and short-sighted. He has always been a man of affluence and rarely strayed outside the sphere of that affluence. His formative years fell in a period of time in which America attained and held the position of undisputed leader of the "Free World" on several fronts. Then he watched, presumably with pride, as the country struggled to escape its racist and sexist heritage. His picture of America is shaped accordingly, showing an economic giant making the world safe for democracy, a country in which each generation has more of its citizens fulfill the national dream.
Our formative years, still in progress, include fallout from Ronald Reagan's "Think less — you'll feel better" policies, whose products range from a debt burden that defies comprehension, whining car manufacturers and an increasingly carcinogenic environment. We have never known legal discrimination, but we see or experience the discrimination that remains rooted in economics, education, and attitudes, and we are not satisfied.
The Cold War, which many in America claim to have won, was as much a matter of mutually-assured destruction as a nuclear exchange would have been. By involving the Third World, we and the Soviets successfully converted much of the potential, economic or otherwise, of nearly every country in the world into some kind of death, leaving those countries who excluded themselves or were excluded from our game in the uncomfortable position of its only winners.
We and the former Soviet republics face similar problems now; they differ only in magnitude and distribution. Just as they overcome theirs, so can we overcome ours. But the crucial first step must be awareness of the problems. Let us not restrict or destroy those agencies that protect us, however imperfectly, from
negligence, discrimination or fraud,
merely on the assumption that defective
limbs must be amputated. Let us not
exempt the wealthy from paying for these
services on the assumption that their
investments are all that matter. Let us
not cut ourselves off from an increasingly
interdependent world on the assumption
that fair trade should require no effort.
And let us not lay stiffer penalties on criminals merely on the assumption that everyone has an alternative.
The central problem is this: Our guiding principle, our reason for being a world power has always been negative. We were anti-communist, just as they were anti-capitalist. That principle is gone. We now have the opportunity to reassess our global role, to change our status from power to partner, and reorient our goals from something negative to something positive. In the end, we must address this particular problem or, falling ever further out of alignment with reality, we too will collapse, last victim of the Cold War. But perhaps, if we are wise, that will be the first problem we recognize.
Saul Epstein
Prairie Village junior
Count administrators
Your editorial of Jan. 23 was right on target. We should be pleased that our graduate teaching assistants might receive a full fee waiver, and your warning is most appropriate.
According to an article printed in the Kansas on Dec. 4, 1991, KU experienced a 41-percent increase in the number of GTAs between 1985 and 1990. It is also important to note that during this period there was a 5-percent decline in full-time faculty and a 28-percent increase in administrators.
Your warning that the "University should guard against a policy of replacing full-time faculty with GTAs" should be extended to replacing faculty members with administrators.
Lawrence Sherr
Cancellors Club Teaching Professor
Cardinal has changed
Ina Jan.29letter criticizing a sports column by David Mitchell, journalism student Brandon Hull writes that Mitchel'
"loses...credibility by mismanaging a college football team. Stanford University's mascot is, and always has been, the Cardinal. Not Cardinals, but Cardinal. As in 'the Stanford Cardinal.'"
It's true that Stanford began its history as the Cardinal, a name spawned by sportswriters referring to the color of the football team's jerseys. But according to Steve Raczynski, Stanford's sports information director, the name evolved into the Cardinals, and during the 1930s the students adopted the nickname "Stanford Indians."
In the 1970s, sensitivity to concerns by Native Americans led the university to rename itself the Cardinals. Then, in 1981, prompted by a desire to return to its roots as well as giving a nod of recognition to the university's president, who was an alumnus of the Harvard Crimson, Stanford reverted to the Cardinal. Thus, it has come full circle.
As a great editing professor at this University once said, Mr. Hull, "If your mother saves she loves you, check it out."
In other words, know your facts
KANSANSTAFF
Ben Jones Lawrence resident, 1985 KU graduate
TIFFANYHARNESS
Editor
VANESSA FUHRMANS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Editors
Editors
News...Mike Andrews
Editorial...Beth Randolph
Planning...Lara Gold
Campus...Eric Gorski/Rochester Oleon
Photo...Eric Lehman
Photo...Julie Jacobson
Features...Debbie Weyers
Graphics...Jeff Messery/Aime Brainard
JENNIFER CLAXTON Business manager
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr ..Bienniewieden
Regional sales mgr ..Rich hamburger
National sales mgr ..Stott Hauna
Co-op sales mgr ..Ameh Jones
Production mgrs ..Kim Wallace
Marketingdirector ..Kim Claxion
Creative director ..Leanne Doolan
Classified mgr ..Kip Chin
JAYSTEINER Retail sales manager
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Stick
by David Rosenfield