Opinion
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Lindsey Henry, Editor
Dave Morantz, Managing editor
Kristie Blasi, Managing editor
Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser
4A
Marc Harrell, Business manager
Colleen Eager, Retail sales manager
Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser
Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
Monday, March 16, 1998
DAILY KENTSTATER
Guest Editorial
Campus should be closed longer to increase safety of pedestrians
Excessive traffic marts the heart of our campus during rush hour. What should be a peaceful stroll down Jawhayk Boulevard has become a perilous trek through reckless drivers darting around vulnerable pedestrians.
Something must be done.
Unless the parking department extends the hours that campus is closed to unauthorized traffic to 7 p.m., Jayhawk Boulevard will continue to pose a danger to pedestrians and motorists.
ers can't recognize a cross walk.
Anyone who has attempted to cross Jayhawk Boulevard in the evening has felt the terror of having to dodge over-determined drivers. Maybe they are in a hurry to swallow up a precious parking space. Or maybe they struggle to see pedestrians in the dim twilight. But on a campus of higher learning, it's puzzling why most drivand pedestrians' headaches would vanish with the groans of roaring engines and the wails of blaring horns.
Surely the drivers can recognize that the excessive traffic threatens their safety as well. Driving on campus between 5 and 7 p.m. is a white-knuckled rat race through negligent motorists and narrow lanes.
Faculty and staff leaving campus for the day and students eager to find prime parking spaces for evening studies and events make a dangerous combination.
The buses, though they help alleviate some traffic, travel in long convoys, blocking traffic and adding to drivers' frustrations. And drivers trying to get from one part of Lawrence to another compound the problem.
But it doesn't have to be this way.
But it doesn't have to be this way!
If the parking department would keep Jayhawk Boulevard closed to unauthorized traffic until 7 p.m., safety concerns
The advantages to such a plan are numerous:
Drivers leaving campus in the evening would have time to exit safely.
Spaces would open up for motorists arriving on campus in the evening.
Pedestrians would be able to safely traverse Mount Oread.
As concerned members of the University of Kansas community, we must voice our disgust with the excessive evening traffic on Jayhawk Boulevard. Call the parking department today and urge them to close the boulevard to unauthorized traffic between 5 and 7 p.m. It's our boulevard, our campus and our safety.
Dave Morantz, Kansan co-managing editor,special to the editorial board
Editorial
Better minority retention needed
The University of Kansas has programs that support students academically, but statistics show that the current efforts are not enough to retain cultural minorities. The University should work to increase the percentages of returning cultural minorities.
The Office of Institutional Research and Planning reported that 68.8 percent of minority students, defined as Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans or Pacific Islanders, and African Americans, enrolled in Fall 1995 returned for the Fall 1996 academic year. This figure was less than the 70.3 percent of caucasian students who returned in 1996. Although the difference seems minimal, it is consistent from year to year. Of the 336 cultural minority students
enrolled in fall 1966, 242 returned in Fall 1997. That is a 70.3 percent retention rate. Caucasian students had a 78.6 percent retention rate that year. The University's overall retention rate for the 1996 to 1997 academic year was 77.8 percent.
Many efforts are being made to help students make it through the system. Programs such as Students Together Exeelling in Education as Peers offer mentoring and tutoring opportunities for minority students. The Student Development Center, Supportive Educational Services and the Multicultural Resource Center all offer academic services to minority students. But this is not enough.
Dr. Sherwood Thompson, Director of the Office of Minority Affairs, said that having faculty, staff and administrators who are members of the same race and ethnicity as minority students is crucial to these students' retention. We agree. The administration should do more to make the University an attractive place for minority students to come—and to stay.
ity students from using them. Some Caucasian students may feel uncomfortable using services with the words minority or multicultural attached to the name. This feeling of a lack of ownership is the same feeling that helps cultural minority students get lost in the cracks.
There are no offices or services on campus that exclude white or cultural minor
Kansan staff
Ameshia Tubbs for the editorial board
Paul Eakins ... Editorial
Andy Obermeuer ... Editorial
Andrea Albright ... News
Jodie Chester ... News
Julie King ... News
Charity Jeffries ... Online
Eric Weslander ... Sports
Harley Ratliff ... Associate sports
Ryan Koerner ... Campus
Mike Perryman ... Campus
Bryan Volk ... Features
Tim Harrington ... Associate features
Steve Puppe ... Photo
Angle Kuhn ... Design, graphics
Mitch Lucas ... Illustrations
Corrie Moore ... Wire
Gwen Olson ... Special sections
Lachelle Rhoades ... News clerk
News editors
Advertising managers
Kristi Bisel ... Assistant retau. rv.
Leigh Bottiger ... Campus
Brett Clifton ... Regional
Nicole Lauderdale ... National
Matt Fisher ... Marketing
Chris Haghrian ... Internet
Brian Allers ... Production
Ashley Bonner ... Production
Andee Tomlin ... Promotions
Dan Kim ... Creative
Rachel O'Neill ... Classified
Tyler Cook ... Zone
Steve Grant ... Zone
Jamie Holman ... Zone
Brian LeFevre ... Zone
Matt York ... Zone
“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” —George Bernard Shaw
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: 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.
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 Staufer-Flin Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Paul Eakins (eokins@kansan.com) or Andy Obermeyer (andyo@kansan.com) at 864-4810. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the staff stoff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Perspective
Like Titanic, movie industry a sinking ship
Titanic is going to sweep the Oscars March 23, and then civilization as we know it will end.
That's only a slight exaggeration.
Things will continue just as before. The troubles in the Middle East will rage on, Ken Starr will go back to work and the Hollywood movies will just keep on getting dumber.
Jeremy Doherty opinion @ kansan.com
Yup. Thanks to James Cameron's magnum opus, which cost the bean counters more than $200 million, the floodgates have opened for a new wave of bloated mediocrity.
I liked Titanic. Heck, I saw it twice. It is a visceral, haunting piece of pop entertainment. A Gone With the Wind for the 90s? Sure, why not?
It's also manipulative, awkwardly written and contains about 23 shots too many of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet racing through flooded corridors. Many have already pointed out that Titanic is more or less Romeo & Juliet Go to the Poseidon Adventure.
Let's be frank. The only reason the movie worked at all was because its director always assembles some semblance of a story before he shoots a foot of film. But he's the exception. For every expertly crafted Titanic, we get a dozen over-priced thrill rides that only offer cheap imitations, minus the soul or originality. Look no further than Con Air, a weird mix of Die Hard, Airport and The Dirty Dozen.
Even Cameron himself is slipping. Despite being considered one of the more nimble director/writers in the action genre (that's not saying much, mind you), there was one crucial Oscar nomination that he didn't get.
It's important to remember that the Oscars as an institution are relatively meaningless. Does anyone remember that Citizen Kane, considered to be the definitive classic of American moviemaking, only won a single Academy Award? How many can come up with the title of the movie which beat Orson Welles's masterpiece?
If Titanic takes home the top honor, and it most assuredly will, it will become the first movie since 1965's The Sound of the Music to do without a getting a nod in either of the two writing categories.
In the wake of the Spielberg/Lucas glory days of the '70s, Hollywood focused on bigger budgets, more special effects and less story. Studios found they could make just as much money overseas, and who wanted to spend a lot of time overdubbing and subtitling complicated dialogue? They had a huge investment to protect, so who cared about content as long as the green kept rolling in?
Braveheart and The English Patient were the previous two.
But awards do make an immediate impact on the movies in production. When work of a certain calibre is recognized, it encourages further work in the same vein. Why else did we see a string of Vietnam war movies after *Platoon* won Best Picture in 1986?
Wait, it gets better. If *Titanic* takes home the golden boy, which it will, then it will become the third Best Picture winner in three years to not take home either of the two writing Oscar's (1995's
It's surprising to recall that Oscar winners from the past like Midnight Cowboy and The Godfather had been summertime hits. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly suggests correctly that they would struggle, much like last year's critics' favorite, L.A. Confidential, in today's climate.
Is there a light ahead? Not by judging the upcoming slate of event movies for this summer. We've got two meteorite movies, *Lethal Weapon 4* and a remake of *The Avengers* on the horizon. Plus, the team behind Independence Day is handing us a version of Godzilla which should boast plenty of thrills and very little irony.
The meaning of all this should be obvious. We are rapidly approaching a period when Hollywood no longer even pretends that it's producing intelligent, ground-breaking entertainment. It's all razzle-daze spectacle, part of the thrill ride.
After Sound of Music won Best Picture, we were treated to the first works of the movie brats Coppola, Scorsese and Altman.
Perhaps their successors will pull up in a lifeboat soon, before we go down with the ship again.
Doherty is an Olatte senior in journalism and the Kansan's movie critic.
Rock Chalk Revue: the University's 'class' act
If you are tired of hearing about how Rock Chalk Reve is a bad thing, read this and you'll know how to shut
you'll know how to shut those critics up.
Economic justice overcomes institutionalized dependence on charity while the Revue teaches us to support institutionalized dependency. It does so by allowing college kids to have fun and be creative in a manner that teaches one not to challenge cultural assumptions about charity. A creative idea would be to call for a welfare state that worked well. If we spent 49
Also, insulated from the injustices that these funds are combating, the privileged aren't compelled to combat the causes of injustice.
Matt
Bachand
 opinion@kansan.com
I've heard people complain about the Native American Student Association protesting. The common response is, "We're giving you money, why are you biting the hand that feeds you?" Giving money with that attitude only lets the revue off the hook by ignoring the root causes for the need of charity, but adds to the condescending classist values.
By holding events such as the Revue, you reinforce negative cultural stereotypes when they exist in a skit and institutionalize dependences. You again reinforce leisure class values. I can afford it, so the good I do for society can take frivolous forms because it is enjoyable and hey, "the needy" are being paid — the "by me" is implicit.
years of Revue hours on that one, we'd have a winner. Why isn't that an option? Probably because it isn't part of the dominant values that the Revue seeks to reinforce.
Guess what gang: The richest people on this campus could be raped tomorrow, walk into Womens' Transitional Care Services and get United Way-funded aid. But wouldn't it be better to start an escort program and educate children about sexual violence and the objectification of women in order to stop rape from happening? Of course, we wouldn't have time to work on the
skit. We'd be doing something that cuts across class lines to help people, whereas raising money through a skit means that we can hang out with the same people we've socialized with, never challenging our service values by working with the "served." This further reinforces the values and class structures that led to the current dispute.
How many revue shows ever have had partnerships with the Social Service League, the Pelathe Community Center, a.k.a. Lawrence's 'Indian Center,' or other United Way-funded organizations? That seems like a Revue skit I would support. Who are the judges that select the skits? Are they local artisans? Alumni? People from all segments of the community? If you want to silence your critics, ask and answer your critics. If they're involved in the process, you won't have these problems.
Arguments against political correctness, in which line drawing and slippery-slope arguments are made, are a subconscious attempt to repel the critiques and the exposure of the inadequacy of events like the Revue. Revue organizers should admit its problems and make it better.
I'm not offended by everything, but defenses of the Revue, in which service is secondary to pageantry, where cultural insensitivity is, at least this year, reproduced and displayed, and the dependency culture is reinforced, offend me. For those of you who say, "Something offends everyone in this day and age," you should think about who has a right to be offended. I have no sympathy for Lexus-driving caucasian men who go to Alvamar three times a week and might be essentialized as wearing sweater vests on the 14th hole. To compare them to the injustices done to even the caucasian lower class is repulsive. Society keeps nothing from the Alvamar guy for wearing a vest, but our values keep the homeless out of the library, where people can go to better themselves, because the way they smell offends those of us who can count on a shower several times a week.
The Revue is an excuse to celebrate privilege. Act against it and its classism.
Bachain is a Yorktown, Va., senior in English and East Asian studies.
Feedback
Columnist omitted several vital facts
Although I did find most of Erin Rooney's recent column, "You Should run from, not for, Student Senate" entertaining. I think Rooney should have included at least two more items to her argument.
First, she should have noted that she previously had been a
candidate for Student Senate and, after she lost her election, she was quoted in this newspaper as being quite distressed about her loss. Most students on campus, indeed, do not give "a rat's [noun deleted] about Senate," but until recently, Rooney was not among them. Her criticisms seem to be, at best, disingenuous and at worst, bitter.
Second, her column lacked any self-examination. Her point that being on Senate probably will not matter in one's life three years down the road is well taken. But in three years, how much will be a columnist for The University Daily Kansan matter?
Partha Mazumdar
Pittsburgh, Penn., graduate
student