4
Tuesday, March 29,1994
OPINION UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Student life department handled warnings well
Just prior to Spring Break, the department of student life moved swiftly to inform students of two rapes that had allegedly occurred at the University. The department's actions should be commended.
The department posted notices in University housing stating that two separate allegations of rape had been made against the same man, Jeff Shanks. It also gave Shanks' description and included general information about sexual assault. The notices were made in compliance with the Campus Security Act, which requires universities to give adequate notice of potential dangers on campus.
Dealing with alleged sexual assault is never easy, nor is it comfortable. Any attempt to warn students about a possibly dangerous person must be done responsibly and carefully. Since the accused might be innocent, care must be taken not to imply assumed guilt. Publication of such accusations could result in the tarnishing of an innocent person's reputation, but failure to do so could shatter an innocent woman's life if another rape occurred because of lack of knowledge of potential danger.
The notices issued by the department of student life showed a mindfulness of the need to balance campus security concerns with fairness to the accused. The notices maintained an objective, purely factual con tone. They neither accused nor excused anyone.
Understandably, all universities want to maintain a "crime-free" image. This desire can lead to a reluctance to inform people about allegations of rape and violence on campus. Rather than trying to minimize publicity, however, the University has acted responsibly in ensuring that students are informed about the rape allegations made here.
SEAN FINN FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Strong stance needed on hate crimes here, too
The unthinkable has happened. On the eve of Passover, the synagogue in Luebeck, Germany, was bombed. It is suspected that neo-Nazi groups committed the heinous crime, the likes of which were last seen in the Krystal Nacht massacres in 1938.
But the German government has used this latest atrocity to take a stronger anti-Nazi stance and to encourage citizens to take to the streets and rally against hate crimes. Finally a government has the courage to say that crimes of hate and discrimination are wrong and that citizens have the right and responsibility to stand up to the new breed of terrorists.
But many people still are disgustingly apathetic despite the noble efforts of the German government to raise awareness of the evil of hate. Many of those people believe hate-group activities in other cities or countries do not affect them. Those people have obviously not learned history's lessons.
When Nazis began herding Jews into ghettos and persecuting them, the world supposed it did not concern anyone outside of those ghettos. It was not until the world realized the power that the Nazis had to invade other countries that they became involved.
If the world had taken notice of the horrors committed in the ghettos and the concentration camps, and if citizens had taken to the streets then, lives might have been saved.
We should be confronting these groups of ignorant haters. The time has come to get off our apathetic high horses so that we are not the targets of the next trend in hate crime.
DONELLA HEARNE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Editors
Asst Managing Editor...Dan England
Assistant to the editor...J.R. Clariborne
News...Kristi Fogler, Katie Growbread
Todd Selfertt
Editorial...Colleen McCain
Nathan Oleson
Campus...Jess DeHaven
Sports...David Dorsey
Photo...Doug Hesse
Features...Sara Bennett
Wire...Allison Lippert
Freelance...Christine Laue
Business Staff
JEANNE HINES Sales and marketing adviser
Campus sales mgr ... Jason Eberly
Regional Sales mgr ... Troy Tarwater
Retail Assistant mgr ... Judith Stainley
National Coop sales mgr ... Robin King
Special Sections mgr ... Shelly McConnell
Production mgrs ... Laura Guth
Gretchen Kootterlhitchin
Marketing director ... Brian Kotter
Creative director ... John Carton
Classified mgr ... Kelly Connally
Tearshears 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 Washington will be required to submit their letter.
Guest column should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be photographed.
The Kansas reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansas newsroom, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
Students should revive old idea, support plan to control their fees
Since Student Senate elections are near, and the various coalition's campaigns are about to start, now is time to review a bit of history regarding your student activity fee. You know, the $28 you pay every semester that Student Senate passes on to campus groups it thinks are most deserving of your money?
Two years ago, a handful of people, myself and several others who were members of the KU Libertarians, thought it made sense to allow students to allocate their own money to the groups each KU student thought most deserving of her or his money. Here is an outline of what we proposed: At fee payment, each student would get a ballot listing all the chartered groups on campus. Each student would anonymously allocate her or his $28 activity fee in $1 increments to the campus organizations each prefers, including a fund managed by Student Senate. The plan could be phased in over four years, and no organization's budget could increase or decrease more than 10 percent a semester for the first four years. This was so organizations could make coherent budget plans. After four years, each organization's budget
would reflect how effectively each student group convinced the student body that it was worthy and deserving of being funded.
Student Senate's primary job would be to confirm, as they do now, that groups receiving money were operating in compliance with the various University regulations and allocate whatever money students turned over to Student Senate.
This "check-off" plan, as it is known, has many advantages. The most obvious is that campus groups that traditionally have lobbied Student Senate for funds would now have to convince their real customers (KU students) why they should be financed. This activity would increase the visibility of groups on campus. Of course,
money-losing programs, or those whose primary constituency is Student Senate, would see their funding dryup.
Those of us who supported this proposal were shocked by how vehemently most, but not all, student senators opposed this plan. One told us that we were mistaken to think we could trust KU students to make the "right" decisions. We responded that students would make the "right" decision for them, not "right" in the eyes of a student senator fond of a particular group. Another student senator told us that some money-losing programs either would have to cease operation due to lack of popular support or raise their user fees. To this we responded, "Exactly." Another fellow said that alumni expected certain traditions to continue at KU. To this we responded, "We were not aware that Student Senate allocated our activity fees to please the preferences of KU alumni. Poor though they are, why do student senators need our money to gratify KU alumni?"
Alas, those of us supporting the check-off plan, because we thought it would empower students rather than
Student Senate, got outsmarted. After those who opposed allowing KU students to decide which groups they most valued realized that we made more sense than they, we were invited to join a committee.
Committees are how bureaucracies kill initiatives. The committee faded away after several months. Some of our members graduated, others were frustrated by the legislative manipulations of some members of Student Senate (who says Student Senate is not a good training ground for future congressional representatives and senators?).
In short, the check-off plan was shelved. I hope a new generation of KU students, if our generation really is different, will take the initiative to empower themselves. I fear it is more likely that they will continue to let others, Student Senate in this case, make decisions for them. Democracies require work, such as making your own decisions about which groups your money supports.
Alten Tiffany is a Lawrence graduate student in English.
Meaning of word 'awareness' lost
A sign in the Lawrence post office advertises a new "AIDS Awareness" stamp. Last semester KU hosted "Homeless Awareness Week." The semester before that, students pitched tents in front of Watson Library to promote awareness of the Palestine refugee problem. And I've lost count of the number of cultural awareness and environmental awareness programs I've seen here in the last two years.
COLUMNIST
AIDS research, poor relief and other such crusades are all worthy endeavors, generally speaking. The problem isn't with the causes themselves, but rather the attitude displayed by many of their supporters, an attitude aptly summarized in that curious, ubiquitous word "awareness."
Awareness often seems patronizing and even a trifle arrogant. Like the stereotypical American tourist who thinks that, if he or she shouts loud enough and long enough, even the dullest foreigner will somehow understand, awareness gurus seem to assume that most people outside their little circle are chronically misinformed. If an activist recites facts
and figures loud enough and long enough, everyone will come around. Just dole out a little awareness, and they'll understand. They'll think just like us.
Often enough, the methods employed in dispensing such awareness are hackneyed and trite. Sometimes homeless advocates, for example, have a few University students sleep in cardboard boxes on campus for a day or two, then wax eloquent about how they, and everyone else, are aglow with "awareness" of the homeless problem. It's become something of a college fad, what one observer has called a '90s version of slumming. When this was done at KU,
it resembled nothing so much as backyard, and in the end one wonders what was accomplished and who was impressed.
After all, just what is the ultimate goal of "awareness"? How do you know if you are aware enough? Is it possible to be too aware, i.e. obsessed?
I sometimes think that awareness signifies a lack of any goal at all. Rather, it is simply a stratagem for prolonging the existence of organizations whose members are impressed with their own sense of self-importance. It would be a mistake for activists inflated with righteousness to articulate a real, achievable aim. You set a concrete goal, invest much of your time, energy and sense of self in achieving that goal, and then you reach it. Then what? Go home? A better bet is to keep your organization afloat indefinitely, and therefore prolong that warm, fuzzy feeling of self-esteem, by promoting an amorphous aspiration like "awareness." You never can have too much of that around.
Worst of all, awareness serves to
end conversations, not start them. There is only one way of thinking, the aware way. Anyone who is not "aware" of environmental degradation, the homeless problem, or whatever, in the same way as a given activist is "unaware," which is to say ignorant and backward. Awareness does not signify a dialogue or debate among people of different views and political perspectives, and it is never value-free dispensation of information. It is a pontification under the facade of a bland neutrality.
Awareness is the preferred slogan of the politically correct; it is multi-culturalism's staple crop. In its condescension, its self-serving ambiguity and its narrow-mindedness, awareness is symbolic of everything that has gone wrong with the way we conduct conversations on serious issues, at this University and elsewhere. In that word lies the reason why so many of us grit our teeth nowadays at the very mention of otherwise commendable causes.
Brian Dirkel is Conway, Ark. graduate student in history.
Road to the Final Four leads to the Carolinas
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
As a native of Charlotte, N.C., born and raised in the Queen City of the Carolinas, except for a year in Nashville, Tenn., I've experienced a broad range of basketball fever through the years. But the coming of the NCAA Men's Final Four to Charlotte on April 2-4 almost takes the cake!
A bit of the icing on this party cake will be missing because, as much as I love the South, this year's regionals will be a tad "too Southern," if that's possible, with regional titles to be decided in Florida, Texas, and Tennessee and only one outside the South — out in Southern California.
But y'all come from all over!
So, just so the good folks all across the Great Midwest, New England and the Northeast, as well as in the Rocky Mountains and the Great Northwest, won't feel left out, just remember. Lots of roads lead to the Carolina!
David P. McKnight Charlotte, N.C.
Race-based scholarships empower with education
Education is the principle behind race-based scholarships. People opposing race-based scholarships in the editorials have failed to grasp this simple idea.
Mark Durr never asserted that
race-based scholarships would right the wrongs of the past or end racism. He simply said that he was willing to accept a policy that he felt would help alleviate the symptoms of racism and ignorance.
Linnea Roesch explains her argument by comparing Durr's idea to what happened in Germany under Hitler. I do not believe that you can compare the two when the result of one was the Holocaust and the other is education. That is ridiculous.
What is ideal and what is the law is very ambiguous. Owning slaves and selling their children was once an ideal and legal. It has only been 30 years since African-Americans and other minorities have had their civil rights. Now people have the audacity to cry it is 'unfair' to give race-
based scholarships to people who have historically been legally denied access to jobs, education and society.
Race-based scholarships are only a channel for the only tool we have to fight the wickedness of racism; that is education. Education not only for poor minorities but for non-minorities as well. If our curricula and mission statements do not emphasize the importance of cultural diversity and we are not exposed to people of different backgrounds then we are missing the most important part of our education
Anglin, Roesch and Jubraic, your arguments are poor, and you all need to face the real issues.
Charles Menifee Lawrence junior