Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Lindsey Henry, Editor
Marc Harrell, Business manager
Dave Morantz, Managing editor
Kristie Blasi, Managing editor
Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser
Tom Eblen, General manager, newsinist
Justin Krupp, Technology coordinator
Wednesday, April 8, 1998
ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL
Editorials
When legitimate complaints about instructors arise, know where to go
Students with complaints about a teaching assistant or professor should stop moaning about it to their friends and file official complaints.
It is discouraging to be in class with a professor who is hard to understand, won't work with students outside of class, doesn't hand back tests or simply is a bad teacher.
But even more discouraging is when students don't know how or where to register legitimate complaints.
There are two important places to voice complaints against professors and teaching assistants or raise concerns about a department.
The first place is the department itself. If there is a problem with a business professor or assistant, go to the business department. The same goes
for Spanish, journalism, engineering and every other department on campus. Each department has an established complaint system for students with concerns and problems. Students should use these systems.
If students are patient, these departments usually are willing to work with them. The departments, as much as students, want things to run smoothly.
However, if the department does not adequately solve the problem, there is help elsewhere.
One of the more underutilized resources for students is the University Ombudsman Professor Robert Shelton. Shelton's job is to facilitate communication when conflicts arise between students, staff, faculty, and administrators.
Shelton, whose office is in 104 Smith Hall, is impartial, independent and confidential. It is his job to register complaints and try and work them out.
He hears complaints and concerns, conducts investigations, searches for solutions and provides information on a variety of campus procedures and policies.
This doesn't mean students should run to the ombudsman with small complaints. Students who didn't like a grade on a test or want a paper date moved shouldn't waste Shelton's time. But if there is a serious problem with a professor, teaching assistant or department, then go to Shelton.
He is an important resource that more students should use. If they did, students might be a little less discouraged.
Spencer Duncan for the editorial board
Math instructors need better training
In math classes ranging from 002 to 123, students must seek guidance from teaching assistants who cannot communicate mathematics effectively. Whether there is a language barrier or merely an inability to convey knowledge, students have difficulty getting the desired assistance from their instructors. The department of mathematics should create a more rigorous selection process and change this.
Jack Porter, professor of mathematics, said that of the 55 assistants hired by the University of Kansas, almost half are international students with English as their second language. To be hired as graduate teaching assistants, these students must receive a score of 600 out of 670 on the Teaching English as a Foreign Language exam and score a 50 or
better on the Spoken English Education Test. They then undergo an interview process in which each individual from a three-person committee calls the applicants by telephone to test their oral English proficiency.
However, for group leaders, or undergraduate teaching assistants, the University requires that international applicants pass oral and written exams, receive a grade of A or B in two semesters of calculus and submit two teacher recommendation letters.
Despite these efforts to create good instructors, many students still are frustrated. Some TAs impede students' abilities to learn by failing to effectively communicate the information. They may not speak English well enough for students to understand already complex subjects, or they simply may not be able to explain the material sufficiently. This is inexcusable.
Because most applicants have no background in education, both GTAs and group leaders go to prepatory seminars that teach different approaches to tutoring, how to handle problems in the classroom and ways to explain difficult concepts. These seminars are held
before the semester begins and, for group leaders and first-year GTAs, the instruction continues in weekly meetings during the semester.
The department of mathematics should look for ways to enhance its hiring process for TAs. To insure students', and ultimately the department's, success, the department should implement stricter, more rigorous hiring processes.
Emily Hughey for the editorial board
Kansan staff
Paul Eakins ... Editorial
Ann Premer ... Editorial
Andrea Albright ... News
Jodie Chester ... News
Julie King ... News
Charity Jeffries ... Online
Eric Weslander ... Sports
Harley Ratiff ... Associate sports
Ryan Koerner ... Campus
Mike Perryman ... Campus
Bryan Volk ... Features
Tim Harrington ... Associate features
Steve Puppe ... Photo
Angie Kuhn ... Design, graphics
Mitch Lucas ... Illustrations
Corrie Moore ... Wire
Gwen Olson ... Special sections
Lachelle Rhoades ... News clerk
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Ashley Bonner  Production
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Dan Kim    Creative
Rachel O'Neill  Classified
Tyler Cook     Zone
Steve Grant   Zone
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"Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" —Emilio Zapata
Leters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and home-town if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
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Guest columns: Should be double-
spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stuffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Paul Eakins (eakins@kansas.com) or Ann Premer (apremer@kansas.com) at 864-4810. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansas.com) or call 864-4810.
Perspective
Thankless job revives childhood memories
The fields glisten in the early morning dew. A dark, healthy green carpet fed by the spring rain seems to expand to the rising sun, interrupted by goal posts and flags jutting from the ground.
It's 7:30 Saturday morning, and I should feel privileged to view the start of a beautiful day. But I didn't tumble out of bed with a heavy head, waste my only chance of the week to sleep in and drive to the soccer complex to see the sun rise. I'm a referee supervisor for the Kaw Valley Soccer Association, a league for children ages 6 through 16.
Dave Morantz
dmorantz@kansan.com
I with parents whose soccer knowledge only extends to Pele, yet they scream at
every foul call and sometimes try to physically assault other parents.
This morning I will have to tell at least one, probably more, teary-eyed child that he can't play because his cleats are too long and are not covered by the league's insurance policy. His father will plead with me to let it slide just this once while his son huzs his lee asking why he can't play.
I'll have to an 11-year-old girl that she can't enter the field unless she takes out her earrings.
"But her ears were just pierced yesterday," her mother will cry. Tough, those are the rules.
Nothing is more pleasing than to watch 7 and 8-year-olds who have no idea how to play soccer but just enjoy running around the field, bumping into each other, falling down, laughing, standing up and doing it again.
As the first minivan enters the gravel parking lot. I curse myself for keeping this job.
Even more pleasing is teaching young children simple skills, like kicking the ball, or asking two players who just engaged in a hair-pulling contest to shake hands and say they're sorry.
And I'll have teach a new batch of teen-aged referees how to keep control of a soccer game and not let it digress to a slug fest.
On a normal Saturday I'll sit and wait for something to go wrong. But occasionally not enough referees will show up, forcing one of the supervisors to officiate a game. Each morning I pray that happens.
On such a Saturday, I remember that I too once ran aimlessly around a field covered with dew. I remember the simple joy of digging my teeth and lips into a slice of orange at half time and the powerful thrill of scoring a goal or winning a big game.
If a field opens up and I am needed to ret a game, I'll jump at the chance. It will remind me why I've kept this job another season. More importantly, it will remind me of the joys of my childhood. And maybe for an instant I will feel like a young child, oblivious to problems and thankful to run without a care in the world.
This is my fifth season with the soccer league and my third season as one of three supervisors.
A referee rarely receives any positive comments from coaches, players or parents. But a referee supervisor receives even less gratitude. Hardly a "thanks" for checking the fields each morning, assigning referees to fields and digging through the lost and found to find a jersey for a seven-year-old player who wore the wrong color shirt that day.
Despite the good pay, it's a thankless job.
Morantz is an Overland Park senior in journalism and a Kansan managing editor.
Columnist ventures to party in search of inspiration
I was sitting in my room chanting "Live from New York it's Saturday Night" and preparing for my weekly column writing ritual (stage one includes both the words rolling and rock). Suddenly, overwhelming panic
denly, overwhelming panic struck me.
I was officially out of material.
Nick Bartkoski opinion @ kansan.com
I knew this day was coming soon. I only have three jokes, and I reuse them until people catch on. After people figure out that they've already heard all my material several times, I can either go find other people to ply with my jokes, or I can kill those that figured me out (note to self: check if justifiable homicide laws would allow me to slaughter 13,500 people).
I had hoped that my material would at least let me struggle on to the end of the year, but more angry messages poured in every week. Oddly enough, what could have been my greatest defeat — being told by the Letterman people that they wouldn't even let me work for them for free — was the one thing that let my column limp along for another couple of weeks. The event gave me a brief fourth joke: This kind of crap won't get you published in the Harvard Lampoon. But finally, the mine was empty.
Finally realizing that I wasn't going to get my column written, I decided to just give up. With all of this newfound time on my hands, I decided to go ahead and make an appearance at a scholarship hall event. As a general rule, I skip these events, but this one was a little different. Saturday was the scholarship halls' semi-formal, along with an after-party at one of the halls. I didn't have any need to go to the semi-formal — I had gone to plenty of dances without a date — but I had never attended an after-party, and I decided that I was intrigued enough to check it out.
It wasn't long after I came to that shocking revelation that I realized that this Saturday marked the 175th consecutive weekend I stayed locked in my room rather than actually going out and doing something. But I couldn't be bothered with that. I had to figure out why I couldn't come up with a good real world experience to write about.
I just had one problem — my "Nick" costume was in the wash.
For those of you that haven't seen me as I cross campus, my "Nick" costume is jeans, a t-shirt, and this black hooded sweatshirt with a zipper that can make我 look like the evil emperor from Star Wars—only less fear-inducing. The one part of my costume that wasn't in the laundry was my bemused smirk.
With my first team in the laundry, I had to get quickly creative with clothes that I hadn't worn lately. I ended up putting on some shorts, a baggy blue hooded sweatshirt, and a hat that I wore backward. I looked like I was selling weed or something.
When I made it to this party, I vaguely remembered why I don't attend these things. The "party" consisted of an unlented room with a few snacks and music so people could dance. In theory, that's not too bad, but the music was a mix tape compiled by people going door-to-door in the hall and asking for the worst song the residents' owned.
My other problem is that I didn't have any Opinion page groupships proposition me at the party. In fact, I've never had a groupie proposition me. I don't get that. This is a nation obsessed with celebrities, and every celebrity, he be as lame as Peter Tork, has groups. My career at The University Daily Kansan is a hundredfold better than where Tork is today, but he's swimming in groups, and I've got nothing. Where's the justice?
In addition to the groupie issue, only one person recognized me as a columnist. Sure I'm kind of exclusive, but it's not as if seeing me is like a Bigfoot sighting — it's more like the Loch Ness Monster.
As I finally left, my mind raced to come up with a way to parlay the experience into a column, but I decided it was worthless. I mean, that kind of crap won't get you published in the Harvard Lampon.
Just to make a full night of it, I decided to be the absolute last person to leave. I had time. The signs said the party would run from 1 a.m. until when骤, so I figured that it wasn't "w whenever" until I said it was "whenever." However, when I tried to assert that right, I quickly learned that the hall's director considered "whenever" to be another name for 4 a.m.
Bartkoski is a Basehor junior in journalism and English.
Feedback
GTA semester limit will hurt University
Students might get the impression from all of the publicity generated concerning teaching awards that KU administrators really care about good teaching. It is好 to see that Provost David Shulenburger has set the record straight. Consider a department faced with the choice of hiring a good graduate teaching assistant who already has taught 10 semesters or a poorer teacher with less teaching experience. Provost Shulenburger's 10 semester GTA policy forces the department to hire the poorer teacher. Such is the University of Kansas commitment
Don Marquis
Professor of Philosophy
to teaching excellence.
Kansan should stop attacking smokers
Secondly, it is interesting to
I would like to point out three things in regard to the article in The University Daily Kansan on Thursday about smoking.
Given that Amy Rush's source on the number of lung cancer deaths in the non-smoking population is EPA, it is more likely that these should be attributed to the millions of tons of toxic chemicals spewed into the air by industry and cars, rather than to an insignificant amount of secondhand smoke.
note that the Kansan lately has reported on the abundance of cigarette butts on campus, but ashtrays on campus are invariably located next to the doors of buildings. So what is right? Should a smoker avoid the ashtray and smoke where there is nowhere to deposit the remains, or smoke next to the doors?
Finally, the majority of smokers are addicts, hooked in their early teen years, by a corrupt industry that aimed advertising directly at them. Is it not enough that these people are unable to stop a thing that most likely will kill them, or does the Kansan find it necessary to harass them as well?
Sam Raisbeck
Peculiar, Mo., senior