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Tuesday, April 20, 1993
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
IN OUR OPINION
Spending limits needed for Senate campaigns
Every year, Student Senate candidates vow to reach out to students and to listen to the needs of their constituents. However, each year Senate coalitions communicate with students by spending thousands of dollars on campaign posters, buttons and fliers.
As a result, only coalitions that can afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money on campaign materials are able to win elections. This campaign process is both exclusive and unnecessary.
The Senate elections commission has set no absolute spending limitations for coalitions. The commission recommends that a coalition spend no more than $2,100. However, if a coalition wishes to spend more than the recommended limit, they simply must set their own spending limit and submit a final expenditures statement after the election.
This year, all three of the coalitions exceeded the recommended spending limit. The UNITE coalition spent $2,378.09, and the FOCUS coalition spent $2,485.17. The A.C.T.I.O.N.!! coalition spent $4,849.
Each member of a coalition is asked to pay coalition dues, and the presidential and vice presidential candidates often contribute astounding amounts of their own money. John Shoemaker, Senate president-elect, contributed $733.09 to the UNITE coalition's campaign. Obviously, numerous students are excluded from running for office only because they lack the necessary financial resources.
In order to rectify this situation, two changes must occur. First, the elections commission must enforce the recommended spending limit of $2,100. Any coalition should be able to campaign effectively with this amount of money. The commission should impose a punishment on the coalitions that exceed this spending limit.
Second, Senate coalitions must be willing to change. Instead of working to buy the most full-color campaign posters, candidates should strive to speak with the most students. Instead of communicating with students by handing out flies's and buttons, candidates should listen to their constituents' concerns. The advertising aspect of Senate campaigns should be deemphasized, and one-on-one communication should become the primary focus of campaigning.
Presently, Senate offices are won only by students who can bear the financial burden of campaigning. Capable students are inevitably excluded from running because they cannot keep pace financially. By enforcing a spending limit, the Election Commission would force campaign expenditures to become more reasonable. Coalitions could no longer rely on flashy advertisements.
COLLEEN McCAIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Instead, elections would be won by those who actually communicated with students.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
No-fly zone will not end fighting in Bosnia
The NATO operation to prevent Serbs from flying over Bosnia-Herzegovina... has more symbolic than military value.
The message being sent to the Serbs is definitive: NATO is prepared to put a stop to the war in the Balkans. What's not obvious is how NATO can really do so and how just worried the Serbs are about the prospect. That's the problem with a policy of symbolic
gestures.
To be sure, air operations are only effective if they are combined with other diplomatic measures. But if diplomacy fails, as it obviously has in the region, all that remains is the classic intervention, and that has always been and always will be territorial occupation.
The only step that truly offers some chance of ending the conflict in the Balkans is to send forces to keep the warring sides apart.
Diario 16 Madrid, Spain
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Administration should help out student parents
In a rare bold step recently, Student Senate approved a measure increasing funding to Hiltop to provide for expansion to a second site. The debate was tense and emotional, but in the end, all parties came together and took a definitive stand on the issue of child care.
A quick look at the facts reveals a waiting list at Hilltop that is almost twice the number of children enrolled at the center. In terms of time, this translates into a one- and two-year wait before a child is placed. To a student with a limited budget and a tight schedule, a one-to-two year wait for quality affordable child care seems an eternity. Private child care in Douglas County is, at best, difficult to find and if found is usually expensive, an impractical solution for those students with limited resources. Given that the number of students at KU with children is growing steadily, it is important that we make a commitment to providing quality child care at a reasonable rate so that the opportunity for education is available to all and not just to those who can afford private child care.
some interest is supposed to be what is best for the student.
Now that Senate has paved the way for the expansion of Hilltop by coughing up about $300,000 plus the amount for capital outlays, it's time that the administration joins in by providing matching funds to show its support for child care at KU. Currently, the actions taken by the administration in support of child care include the formation of committees and task forces to look into the situation. While task forces are nice and discussion is a wonderful thing, action is what is truly needed at this point. The situation is clear enough and a plan of action has long been established by those at Hilltop with the knowledge and experience to tell the rest of us just exactly what needs to be done. If the administration wants to do more than give lip service, then here is an opportunity to stand up and count themselves in on finest promises ever made at KU. I challenge the administration to follow the example of Senate and go beyond what has been asked of them. If the administration refuses to take a role in the expansion of Hilltop, KU students will be forced look after their own because of the lack of vision of those whose
Jean Winter
I have not done much research on gun violence. However, I would caution anyone from basing arguments in support of National Rifle Association positions on statistics provided by the NRA. Nor would I advocate using statistics from the other side. Importantity is required.
Health studies sponsored by tobacco or pharmaceutical companies are questioned for validity. Media outreach media-sponsored audience data
Gun control laws needed to protect ourselves. others
How then can one logically depend on information provided by one of the interested parties?
With more legal guns out there, it becomes more difficult for the appropriate agencies to keep track of them. That opens the door for more illegal guns to slip through the cracks. Often nothing legally can be done until after crimes have been committed. That is too late.
Many people often forget that laws are designed to protect people from themselves as well as each other. Traffic laws exist because reckless driving endangers lives. An unchecked supply of guns is even more deadly.
We have to create laws to deal with new problems that did not exist 200 years ago. Too many guns pose a problem. It is time to address that problem.
Damian Carlson
to graduate student
Damian Carlson
environmentally and academically In other words, there's nothing quite like a nice, brisk walk.
KU on Wheels wastes money and resources
Wayne Uncas Lawrence resident
I am responding to the article profiling the independent ticket of Bernard Cox and Charles Frey for Student Senate and, specifically, their proposal to eliminate "six KU on Wheels bus routes, including all routes from Daisy Hill to campus" as well as eight buses and the waste of $83,000. I have but five words: Yeah! Yeah! Right! Right! Right!
To those who stand listlessly in line, waiting to file into one of those rolling smokestacks, to those who stare listlessly from behind the glass, subdued by the spring, vinyl-covered foam, don't fret. With the money you will save from not purchasing a bus pass, you'll be able to buy new batteries for your remote control.
This proposal not only makes sense economically but also asthetically, esthetically, kinetically.
Rape victims suffer twice because of judicial process
I recently became aware of the rape of a woman on the University of Kansas campus. As enraged as I was that the woman was forced to endure the knife-point assault, I was even more outraged that police have put her through condemning accusations. As a victim of rape, the girl was violated by the act itself. If this was not bad enough, these officials violated her once again through their disbelief and interrogation. To make matters worse, it was suggested that the girl undergo a polygraph test to determine the accuracy of events the night that she was raped. This questioning can as a result of being raped make it easier a week to report the rape. Because she was too intimidated, frightened, and threatened to come forward the night of the attack, she has been assumed to be dishonest. It was even suggested by the police that she may have made up the story of her attack as an excuse to avoid the remainder of the spring semester.
Victims of rape are forced to endure the memories of their attacks for the rest of their lives. It would be reassuring to think that a woman could come forward to report a rape and not be condemned for doing so. By University officials and local police treating the rape victim as they did, they are sending the wrong message, in fact, victimizing the girl once again and made an already traumatic experience even worse. I would hope that people would realize that rape is the most intimate violation of a woman's rights. A woman should not be violated once again by reporting the crime that was committed against her.
Leslie Selmon Overland Park freshman
Spring break is eye opener for student from England
Sun, sea, sangria and sex seem to be the main ingredients for a spring break at the beach. This is the time when students from across the nation flock to sunny shores, suck liquor stores dry and improve male/female relations with more than the usual enthusiasm.
I'm new to the spring break experience, so for me (a female exchange student from Britain), it held quite a few surprises. The first was having a measly week's vacation instead of the usual month, which most British universities give their students for Easter vacation. So, bearing this in mind, I can't help but think that students in the United States are deprived of time off from school when it comes to holidays.
The second phenomenon being is able to get a saintun in March without leaving the nation. You're lucky to be wearing a T-shirt in England at Easter, never mind a bathing suit. If by some chance the sun does make the odd guest appearance, people will rush for their shorts to make the best of those feeble rays. While students on South Padre Island are catching a good tan and happily re-enacting beach scenes from "Baywatch," the average British citizen probably has a cold during the holiday. They can be seen huddled in their cars, sipping lukewarm coffee from a thermos and watching a curtain of rain sweep across the sea. If you're hoping to get a saintun in England, your best bet is to get it out of a bottle!
The only thing I didn't like about South Padre Island, and I expect it is the same everywhere else, was the misogynistic culture. A lot of the merchandise and the competitions definitely catered to men's tastes. You could buy virtually anything with a scantily clad woman on it, from a beach towel to a snow shaker, but there wasn't a naked male body to be found in the shop. The only thing I could find with a nude man on the front was the token postcard.
STAFF COLUMNIST
Most of the stores also stocked mugs in the shape of a female breast, but I couldn't find a porcelain appendage anywhere! Then there were the beach competitions. Men could gawk at the Miss Wet Bikini, Miss Wet T-shirt and Miss Bimbo contests, but what were women supposed to watch? I scanned the agenda for a Mr. Wet Speedo competition or even a Mr. G-string contest, but I couldn't find anything.
Everywhere you went, pictures of sultry-looking women adorned the shop walls, windows and shelves. Even the drinking establishments were not without their female decorations. Stretched out on one of the bars was a cardboard cutout of a blond, bikini-clad woman trying to sell me Bud Light. Needless to say it didn't work. If it had been a picture of a tanned man in a leopard skin, then I probably would have bought a whole case of beer.
But it wasn't. Obviously advertisers seem to think that only men buy beer. Quite simply, if you're going to South Padre Island to see the "sights," you had better be man.
Franciscoa Gyn Jones is a Ludlow, England junior majoring in American studies.
KANSAN STAFF
GREG FARMER
GAYLE OSTERBERG
Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Asst Managing... Justin Krupp
News... Monique Guislain
... David Mitchell
Editorial... Stephen Martino
Campus... KC Trauner
Sports... David Mitchell
Photo... Mark Woodland
Footwear... Lynne McAdam
Graphics... Dan Schauer
BILL SKEET, Technology coordinator
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr | Brad Bradon
Regional sales mgr | Wade Baxter
National sales mgr | Jennifer Perrier
Co-op sales mgr | Akshey Hessel
Production mgrs | Amuro
Marketing director | Ashley Langford
Creative director | Holly Perry
Grammer | Dave Grave
Ad Director | Dave Habiger
Business manager
MELISSATERLIP
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing advice
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Mystery Strip
by David Rosenfield