4
Tuesday, April 26, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Non-students should not be Student Senators
The lack of a Student Senate policy specifically requiring that student senators be enrolled as students throughout their termis is unacceptable. The very title of Senate imparts that the governing body for students should be composed of students themselves.
When graduate student senator John Altevogt resigned from University Senate Executive Committee and University Council last week, however, it was revealed that Altevogt was not enrolled as a KU student. Altevogt, though, was not in direct violation of Senate rules.
Senate elections codes stipulate that Senate candidates must be enrolled in at least one credit hour at the Lawrence campus and must intend to enroll in at least one credit hour for the next fall and spring semesters. Senate rules and regulations state that only enrolled students at the University may serve as Senate officers. Ironically, no election code or Senate rule specifically mandates that senators must be enrolled as students continuously throughout their terms.
The fact that no such policy exists is a ridiculous oversight by Senate, and a policy requiring senators to be enrolled as KU students during both the fall and spring semesters of their terms should be adopted immediately.
The arguments in favor of such a policy are obvious. Senate is a governing body that allows students' voices to be heard. Allowing nonstudents to represent the views of KU students is nonsensical. Students are best-equipped to know and understand other students.
Senate is the governing body of the University that grants students power in university governance. Allowing nonstudents to serve as student senators relinquishes a portion of the power held by students.
COLLEEN McCAIN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Student Senate should pursue new sports center
The recent Student Senate elections raised questions about the ability of Robinson Center to effectively service students' recreational activities. A solution to those questions should be one of the primary goals of the newly elected Senate.
Robinson Center originally was established as an educational building for the instruction of physical education courses. That mission quickly was adapted to include serving as a recreational center for students in the mornings and evenings and on weekends. Today, students find the facility crowded, and many students choose to work out in private clubs in Lawrence to avoid the long lines at the machines, courts and pools. Unlike other large universities such as the University of Iowa, KU lacks a recreation center that is open all day and that is designed specifically for student use.
Students recently have voted to finance an expansion of Watkins Memorial Health Center that should create a health center better able to serve the students' needs. A referendum to finance a new recreational center also would likely pass, but student fees already have grown too immense in the past year for many students to shoulder the increase. Therefore, Senate should pursue the type of financing that built the Lied Center: private funds.
Senate should act as the liaison to the Board of Regents and the Adams Alumni Center to establish a fund-raising drive for a new recreation center. A new recreation center would allow students to work out at all hours of the day and would bring the University up to par with peer institutions' recreational services.
CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISACOSMILLO, Managing editor
General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
Aest Managing Editor...Dan England
Assistant to the editor...J.R. Clarborne
News...Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald
           Todd Selfert
Editorial...Colleen McCain
           Nathan Olson
Campus...Jess DeLaven
Sports...David Dorsey
Photo...Doug Hesse
Features...Sara Bennett
Wire...Allison Lippert
Freelance...Christine Laue
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business Start
Campus sales mgr ... Jason Eberly
Regional sales mgr ... Troy Tarwater
Retail sell mgr ... Judith Standley
National a Coop sales mgr ... Robin King
Special Section mgr ... Shelly McConnell
Production mgrs ... Laura Guth
Gretchen Kooterleinrich
Marketing director ... Shannon Reilly
Creative director ... John Carton
Classified mgr ... Kelly Connelys
Tearheels mgr ... Wing Chan
Letters should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 200 words. They must include the writer's signature, name, address and telephone number. Writers affiliated with the University of Michigan have the option to type their letters on the Web.
BOSNIA
Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Kansan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
Military force needed in Bosnia
As of this month, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is 2 years old. For two years, the United Nations has watched while Bosnian Serbs have taken control of more than 72 percent of the territory in that shattered country. For two years, diplomats from Britain, France, the United States and Russia, to name just a few, have pleaded for an end to the fighting. The United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the area. Then a more stringent barricade was set up to try to weaken the Serbian resolve to keep fighting. They kept fighting. No-fly zones were instigated. They kept fighting.
Then the Serbs were threatened with air strikes if they continued to shell Sarajevo. They stopped. Shelling Sarajevo, that is. They simply turned and shelled Gorazde.
While Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic deals with diplomats, promising to hand over 50 percent of the country to Muslims and Croats, his generals simply ignore the peace talks. Many international experts are starting to think that Karadzic is in fact is a part of the deception.
Unfortunately there is no reason to believe that any serious military retaliation is coming the Serbs' way. The United Nations and the United States have drawn more lines in the sand than are in a plowed field. Threats without actions are just words. The Serbs don't fear words.
So now the United Nations is considering...air strikes. No, really. It is. Promise.
Wednesday, President Clinton approved a proposal for a wider use of NATO air power. The proposal will be discussed informally at NATO's regular weekly meeting in Brussels and then presented as part of a package of initiatives to NATO's governing body "in the next few days."
COLUMNIST
Meanwhile, Gorazde's hospital is being blown apart by Serbian shells, as are U.N. buildings in that same town. By the time NATO looks at the proposal, Gorazde will be dust and its<sup>a</sup>
65,000 residents will have fled or have been killed.
We must rid ourselves of the viewpoint that if anything gets hard we should quit. Somalia got hard so we quit. Now the war in the former Yugoslavia looks hard and, for two years, we've quit.
The answer is to send in the military. Use the 40 fighter bombers in the U.S. air base in Italy and the ones waiting in the belly of the U.S.S. Saratoga. Send in troops to support the French and British U.N. troops on the ground, with real armored support. Military experts are saying it will be tough to stop the Serbs, but not impossible.
Yes, there probably will be casualties. American soldiers probably will die. But as tragic as any death is, that reason should not stop us from acting. On the same day Clinton announced his proposal, a senator cautioned him not to commit U.S. troops to anything without first considering that he may be putting their lives at risk. Lucky for us, this attitude did not exist in 1944 when Allied troops landed on the Normandy beaches. If we are going to hold back whenever we think that soldiers may die, we may as well not have a military. We should be cautious but committed to action.
On the 50th anniversary of those Normandy landings, let's remember why that generation fought World War II and take responsibility for the one we have to fight now.
Jack Fisher is a London senior in Journalism.
Bosnia editorial lacks truth, logic
Not as a Bosnian, but as a human being, I could not believe the University Daily Kansan's editorial Wednesday. Obviously, the editorial board seems to have little knowledge about the history of civilization and of human life in general.
The opinion argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had made a poor decision to use air strikes in the former Yugoslavia "because the conflict in the former Yugoslavia has been going on for decades."
Furthermore, the editorial stated,
"NATO should simply let the stronger side win out." That amounts to an open call to all the junior Hitlers around the world to kill whoever they want (those, of course, who do not have weapons). In Europe we used to call it "Stalinism!" What does this prospect mean for the future of the world?
That statement is the first lie. I lived for decades in Yugoslavia and nobody was in conflict!
The Bosnian people never had the weapons. The Yugoslavian army, under the control of Serbia, had the
More important, the statement displays a certain bigotry. Applied to the United States, the logic in the editorial would follow that, yes, the hatred between whites and African-Americans has been going on for centuries, and it is just a question of the day when they will start a full-scale war because of past injustices. The extended similarity with the former Yugoslavia would be that when the conflict began, the United States army would be on the side of the white people.
The second lie in the editorial is this statement: "Now that communism is nearly absent from the area, these old ethnic conflicts have been resurrected." Wrong! It's the rise of fascism in Serbia that caused the conflict. The absence of communism does not produce hatred and fascism. Examples are obvious — Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania.
GUEST COLUMNIST
weapons, and it started the pure aggression, genocide and rape. The editorial implies that killing 25,000 children and 250,000 civilians, raping 50,000 women and creating 2 million refugees is justified because the victims lacked weapons.
In addition, Bosnia and Herzegovina were multieathnic states for 900 years! And not just under communism, either. In fact, all of my friends, as well as 25 percent of all Bosnian people, are in mixed marriages.
For centuries, nobody could break the multiethnicism. Hitler tried but failed because the Yugoslavian people received great support from the West to stand up to Hiter. But the overwhelmingly armed Serbian army, with the support of Western bureaucrats and apathy from others, may break the principles of multiethnicism.
Breaking up multiethnic states will break up not only entire civilizations but also individual households and even bedrooms. What if other multiethnic states broke up? Would people care? They should — the United States is a powerful country founded on the principles of multiethnicism.
By not opposing Serbian fascism, Americans will be making the same mistake that President Franklin Roosevelt did early in World War II when he thought that the war should be fought without Americans. His thoughts, however, coupled with those of many others during that time, resulted in the Holocaust.
Hadimelqi Szkir is a Sarajevo graduate student in electrical engineering.
LesBIgDay promotes civil rights, not sexuality
In a letter printed in Tuesday's Kansan Lisa Werner asks for someone to "please explain why...are we wasting time on "Wear Jeans if you're LesBiGay Day?" Just like you Lisa, I don't particularly care whether people like to "do it in the dark, with the lights on, on the kitchen floor or in a public restroom," but your mistake is in assuming this is what LesBiGay Awareness Week is about.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Werner makes it clear that, to her, LesBiGay awareness is a pointless waste of time because people are not defined by their sexual orientation. Good for you, Lisa. I applaud your accepting nature. However, not enough people share your enlightened attitude. Lesbian, bisexual and gay people frequently are denied housing, employment and marital status. LesBiGay people commonly are disowned by their families, friends and communities simply and only because of their sexual orientation. LesBiGay people are harassed, beaten, and murdered — even in this city, Lisa —
because of their sexual orientation
Taking this into account, it seems to me that LesBiGay Awareness Week is far from unnecessary and it shocks me that a person who seems to understand the importance of ending world hunger and creating world peace would respond to civil rights with "I don't care."
I agree with you that a person is not defined by sexual orientation. Sadly, not enough others share our unconditional compassion, love and respect for humanity. Being such an allay, I'm surprised you didn't know that.
David Nickol Lincoln, Neb.. senior
Nonjeans wearers are not all hate mongers
I am incensed by the hypocrisy displayed by Alisha Arora in her column entitled "Janes Day" shows diversity — of biased students wardrobes."
First, she claims that the point of the day was to "treat it like any other day.. Hence, we abolish sexual stereotypes and live happily in a politically progressive world." But Tuesday WAS NOT just any day. Students were instructed to wear jeans
dents they were homosexual or if they
supported the efforts of the LesBiGays OK group. I am not gay, nor do
I support that group's cause. Should
I wear jeans even if I do not fall under
parameters set by the group?
I wish that bleeding-heart liberals such as Arora would open their eyes to reality. She stated that she had never seen so many "knit leggings, khaki packs and warmup suits in one day on campus" as on Tuesday. Because so many people did not participate in GALA Week events, that should say something about how society views the homosexual question.
Arora also claims that sexual orientation is important only to the
I don't know what residence hall Arora lives in, but in the residence hall I've lived in for two years, McColum Hall, the majority of opinions I have heard have said both this and last year that it's fine if you're gay, that you're perfectly entitled to fair treatment in every aspect but that they don't appreciate being labeled as evil or close-minded. Either that or they proposed an "Anti-gay Day" to present the other point of view.
people directly involved in the matter. This confuses me. If this were true, why have a GALA Week? Why is she condemning people who do not support this cause? If it's really important only to members of the LesBiGayOK group, then are all students invited to participate and admonished when they don't?
Don't put me in the same category as the Rev. Fred Phelps because I choose not to wear jeans on a day for gays and supporters of their cause. Just because I don't support that cause doesn't mean that I'm a hate-monger who prowls the street at night waiting to beat up gays.
There always will be prejudice, bigotry and hatred in this world. Get used to it. Unfortunately, if you are part of a minority, you may be subjected to some form of discrimination. When a good portion of society declares something as a taboo, such as homosexuality, there is nothing that can be done to completely eradicate it. Prejudice will never be universally lost, no matter how many attempts the self-declared PC cops make to cram their morality down unwilling people's throats.
Chris Colby Fort Leavenworth sophomore