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Monday, April 18, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Sentencing guidelines hold the public prisoner
If there is a war on crime in the state of Kansas, the criminals are clearly winning.
The latest example came a week ago in Topeka with the shooting deaths of three innocent people. The accused murderer is Robert Lewis Jackson, a 24-yearold man with a long and varied criminal background. Jackson was released from prison last January as a result of a new sentencing guideline. Despite public opposition to releasing prisoners early, the state's policies continue to put the public at risk.
The controversy deals with the state's plan to establish uniform guidelines for sentencing. Once a prisoner serves a set amount of time for a given offense, he or she is released.
This plan is being applied retroactively to the current prison population. As a result, any prisoner who has already served the newly-set time for their sentence and is considered "non-violent" by the state is eligible for release, regardless of their original sentence. This policy has made about 3,000 prisoners eligible for early release. Almost 2,000 have been released.
The state says that this is its solution to prison overcrowding. And if the legislators have not gotten the message yet, taxpayers don't want these criminals on the street.
Surveys have shown that the public, while generally opposing government spending increases, is very much in favor of building more prisons. The public is tired of being held prisoner by criminals.
We are not asking that prison sentences be lengthened. However, prisoners should be held accountable for their original sentences. Until this is done, the public will continue to lose the fight.
RICHARD BOYD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Anti-abortion center doesn't fit among homes
The Wichita City Council made the correct decision when they voted to reject a proposed rezoning that would have allowed an anti-abortion center to open in a residential area near an abortion clinic.
The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission had voted 10-3 in favor of Serving Women in Crisis Inc.'s bid to rezone the residential area for commercial office space. SWC wants to have its office on the same block as Dr. George Tiller's Women's Health Care Services clinic, but the SWC office would be surrounded by single-family residences on three sides. The commission held there were no legal grounds to deny the rezoning, but the city council voted 6-1 that there was a rational reason to deny the request.
Vice Mayor Joan Cole said history had proven that there was a potential for conflict in the neighborhood if the bid was accepted. Tiller's abortion clinic has been the target of protests, and last August, Tiller was shot leaving the clinic.
Placing an anti-abortion center near residences could disrupt the area. Undoubtedly, more protests would result.
The city council has a duty to protect the character and harmony of the residential area. A change in the zoning regulations for an anti-abortion center to be built a few doors from one of the most popular targets of anti-abortion protests is ridiculous. If the SWC wants to be that close to a specific clinic, they can purchase property already zoned for commercial office space, property that is away from young children and away from their homes.
CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager. news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
Editors
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
Aest Managing Editor ...Dan England
Assistant to the editor...J.R. Clairbone
News ...Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald
...Todd Selfert
Editorial ...Colleen McCain
...Nathan Olson
Campus ...Jess DeHaven
Sports ...David Dorsey
Photo ...Doug Hesse
Features ..Sara Bennett
Wire ..Allison Lipper
Freelance ..Chrétine Laue
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr ..Jason Eberly
Regional sales mgr ..Troy Tarwater
Retail assm mgr ..Judith Standle
National & Coop sales mgr ..Robin King
Special Sections mgr ..Shelly McConnell
Production mgr ..Laura Guth
Gretchen Koetterholrich
Managing director ..Shannon Reilly
Creative director
Classified mgr ..Kelly Connelys
Teachets mgr ..Wing Chen
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Graduation and the real world means adjusting to new lifestyle
There are about four weeks left of my education. Come May, I will hopefully join "the madding crowd" and start my career in journalism. Based on contemporary statistics on the work force, I will change jobs eight times over the next forty years, move three times and possibly change careers altogether, twice.
With the ultimate deadline hanging over me, I began to wonder how my life would truly change in May. For a start, I won't be able to wing it, to make it up as I go along. I won't be able to do homework for one class in the previous one. In the real world every day is one long class. I won't be able to hide in the back row, or avoid raising my hand. If I don't get noticed out there, I don't move up, and that's the game, folks, to move upward and onward, in pay and prestige. There will be no make-up quizzes in the real world. There will be no more dooling. I will have to pay attention.
So I had better choose a job I will enjoy, assuming there's a choice, or a job. I'd better enjoy it because by the time I retire at 65, I will have spent
76,800 hours doing it. That's about 8 years, 8 months of work, not including lunch hours.
But that number's too vague, too undefined to really hit home. It doesn't bother me quite like the threat of a 40-hour work week. Of course, these days it's more like 50 hours. In all the time I spent in college, I don't think I ever dedicated a whole 50 hours to school. Even when I had a 16 hour load, I really can't admit to having studied another 34 hours. That would have broken down into four hours, 51 minutes and 25 seconds of studying every day, and I would have remembered if had ever done that in
any week.
So now I have to brace for a lifestyle that requires constantly rising early, shaving and dressing presently. I will have to wear long sleeves, maybe even jackets, in 100-degree weather. Staying up late to catch the midnight showing of "thirtysomething" will be out of the question and so will end my quest to see the last episode where everyone quits their careers and goes camping. Somehow, I have always felt seeing that episode would be instructive.
I will have to get out of the mode of submerging myself in new subjects twice a year for 16 weeks, and then, having crammed that knowledge of Roman History or Media Law into my short term memory for finals week, forgetting who Caitlin was or the three forms of unprotected speech. It's not good to forget things at work. In fact, you're encouraged to remember everything, from day one to day 14,600.
Before I get the job of my dreams, I have to get that elusive interview, and to get one of those, I have to send out
resumes with cover letters. The cover letter is a curious piece of communication. In three paragraphs, you have to express your rabid enthusiasm for the job you hope to have in the company to which you are writing, your obsessive interest in that company; "I've been following the rise of your company since kindergarten." and an (m)inscire sense of gratitude for the three seconds it took your future employer to "consider my application."
Then comes the resume. A piece of self-promotion that would have made Oscar Wilde blush. Everything you did in college that you thought would look good on a resume, is now on that resume. The internship where you learned to make coffee and stuff envelopes turns into "exposure to the running of a professionally-manned environment."
Four weeks left in which to find the job that will define who I am. If I let it.
Jack Fisher is a London senior in Journalism.
Time at school a waste but necessary
I just don't care anymore.
It just doesn't matter.
I am stone blind drunk even as I attempt to write this.
To say I am pessimistic and cynical about life would be like calling World War II a scuffle.
After 15 years, I can honestly say I have experienced the American school system, and it has left me thoroughly disheartened.
I have wasted the best years of my life sitting in a desk transcribing one hundred times "I will learn to stay in my desk and stop talking" because I had the audacity and spontaneous thought to express ideas and behaviors outside the cultural mainstream
High school was a waste. Its sole purpose was to subjugate any individualism I might have felt and to provide me a transcript to get into college.
What is college worth? A foot in the door.
I have taken over 100 hours of college, and only about 12 hours are directly applicable to my efforts to acquire a job.
Yes, yes I know. The other 88 hours of sensitive, cultural mind-broadening courses have made me a better member of the global community. What a load of horse dung. I could have achieved the same approximate
end by watching the Discovery Channel and listening to pompous drunk-ards in dimly lit bars expound their world views in between over-priced Rum and Cokes.
Do I sound harsh? I don't care.
Mostly, the real world (a negative term that many college students have
It is all I can do to drag my exhausted butt out of bed in the morning. My night job that puts food on the table looms far more important than the cultural significance of Ernest Hemingway's portrayal of Americans in France. Don't tell me about my duty as a student to realize my full potential. Not starving is my main goal, and I am heartily sick of courses and majors geared to students who have 57 hours of free time a week.
A lot of things have brought this dark mood on.
never been forced to grasp) is throwing up all over me, and I am feeling a little chunk-covered. After numerous long years, the pressures of school have finally overwhelmed my laidback consciousness.
I have found a great job with future potential for this summer and next fall in Oregon, and that is part of my lack of enthusiasm for this particular school year. If my adviser had not extracted a promise from me to return to school after my internship and finish my degree, I am not even sure I would finish this year.
It all just seems so pointless to me. We destroy our youth to obtain a job to suffer through for the rest of our limited days. Life is relegated to the weekends if you are lucky enough to get them.
I am not a material person. I could live quite happily on less than $10,000 a year. Of course, if I was a cook in a bar for the rest of my life I would be deemed a failure, no matter how happy I was.
My one great dream is to write. I love to write. Our only chance at immortality is the works of our spirit we leave behind.
I want to gain immortality. To do that, I must find a job to support myself while I write.
First of all, I have nothing better to do with the scholarship money I receive. Second, I need to prove to pill the teachers that thought I was a dropout loser that I am smart and I can do it.
Now that I am done feeling sorry for myself, let me tell you why I will finish school when I feel it is a waste of time, money and youth.
Pretty stupid reasons to stay in school. huh?
Still, they pull me out of a warmed when I would rather be unconscious.
if the senioritis, the springblas,
homesickness or any other malady is
pulling you out of class, find a reason
to return.
School sucks, but in this overdemanding world, so does the alternative. Damn few people who drop out of school are going anywhere but to an early grave.
Screw it all. Get drunk, sleep late,
eat hardy, suck the marrow from the
bones of life and then stumble into
class late.
In 20 years, you might be glad you
endured school.
Then again, you might have wished you had followed your dreams.
Jacob Amold is a Wichita junior in Journal
am.
Multiculturalism fosters interaction,not division
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
This is in response to Brian Dirck's April 7 article, "Multiculturalism may foster division."
I don't agree with Dirck's glass window analogy. Multiculturalism is not a structure that makes barriers. It is positive, and it breaks down barriers. I am a white Jewish female, and sure, I'm taking advantage of the opportunities that are there for me in Hillel and Jewish Feminists of KU.
However, I think that if I spend all of my time with white Jewish females, I'm going to miss a lot of
other wonderful groups out here. I want to learn about culture and practices that all ethnic and religious groups have. There are no "in" or "out" groups. It's not even a matter of whether you're in a group.
When I go to an awareness dinner, I feel like I'm getting a new and different experience. I don't feel like I'm being forced to conform to that group. I feel very much a free thinker, because I take time to interact with other groups. I don't let any "culture" tell me what to eat, wear, say or think. I think this country is segregated enough!
Devon Fitzig
Wichita freshman
Nirvana singer's legacy will never be forgotten
His honest approach to songwriting touched millions and will continue to do so far into the future.
In early December of 1980, the world lost a man who left an incredible and deep-rooted mark on music. John Lennon's influence still remains with us today. On Friday, the world lost yet another great influence — Kurt Cobain. The 27-year-old frontman of Nirvana was not another incoherent, drug-crazed rock star who made a fatal mistake. He was a legend, a pioneer in music.
What I find absolutely bewildering is the reaction of many students
Cobain came at a time when music needed him the most. He broke down barriers and sang from the heart. Cobain really didn't break the rules as much as he created brand new ones to play by.
here at KU, which is one of indifference. It is puzzling that more people aren't saddened and hurt by the tragedy that occurred last week. Whether or not people know it Cobain's influence will continue to make its mark on today's music as well as our children's music.
Friday's tragedy will not soon be forgotten, nor will Kurt Cobain music. It is truly a terrible loss.
James Pfeiffer St. Louis freshman
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