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Tuesday, January 25,1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Vandalism in theater is senseless and costly
What is the purpose of carving "The system doesn't work" and "Brian sucks" on the seats of Crafton-Preyer Theatre in Murphy Hall?
None. But the total damage done to seats in the theater could be costly to students.
The seats, refurbished only two years ago, have been damaged by those who feel it necessary to gouge personal philosophies into every piece of wood they encounter.
The theater is intended to provide a place where students, faculty and members of the community can indulge in a bit of culture. It is not intended to be a place where people read about who rules and who sucks.
Because of student misconduct, an estimated 180 seats will need to be refurbished, at a price of $50 apiece. The $9,000 will eventually come out of the pockets of students, some of whom have never written on any University property.
If something is so important and so pressing that it must be shared with the next person to sit in that particular seat, there are better ways.
Notebook paper is cheap. And if there is a need to get fancy, Post-It notes are a great way to express the sentiments important of those who write on chairs.
"Anarchy rules" and "Pearl Jam rocks" will be taken just as seriously read on a scrap of paper as on an expensive piece of furniture.
DONELLA HEARNE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Partnership program essential for progress
Every member of the Kansas Legislature claims to be committed to excellence in higher education. Yet one of the most significant bills before them this spring is in serious jeopardy of failing.
The Partnership for Excellence program calls for gradual tuition increases at the Regents schools to put faculty salaries in line with their peer institutions. For years, the Legislature has dragged its heels when it comes to faculty salaries. As a result, KU and the other Regents schools have been losing quality professors to higher-paying jobs and have had a difficult time attracting new professors.
Although the plan calls for a gradually implemented 9 percent tuition increase at the state's three research institutions, the faculty salary increases are very much needed. Last year, KU's average faculty salary was $45,872. Conversely, KU's five peer institutions had average salaries of $52,128 last year.
However, the Partnership does not call only for faculty pay raises. It also honors student requests to improve education in other ways, such as placing more faculty rather than graduate teaching assistants in classrooms, giving students more say in teacher evaluations and improving student advising.
Support for the plan outside the Legislature is widespread. Gov. Joan Finney has said that if Partnership is not passed, she will veto Washburn University's entrance into the Regents system. KU Chancellor Gene Budig has said how important the plan is for KU. The Partnership has been endorsed by the Student Advisory Committee, which is composed of the Regents various student body presidents.
Quality professors are the backbone of any school. If the legislators truly are committed to excellence at the state's universities, passage of Partnership for Excellence is essential.
RICHARD BOYD FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing edito
TOM EBLEN
General manager, news adviser
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Editors
Assistant Managing Editor ...Den England
Assistant to the editor , J. R. Clairbome
News ...Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald,
...Todd Selfart
Editorial ...Colleen McCain
...Nathan Olson
Campus ...Jae DeVaven
Sports ...David Dorsey
Photo ...Doug Hesse
Features ...Sara Bennett
JUSTIN GARBERG
Business manager
JENNIFER BLOWEY
Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Sales and marketing adviser
Business Staff
Campus sales mgr ...Jason Eberly
Regional sales mgr ...Troy Tawray
National & Co-op mgr ...Robin Kring
Special sections mgr ..Shelly McConnell
Production mgrs ..Lara Guath
Gretchen Koerthanwirth
Marketing director ..Shannon Reilly
Creative director ..John Carlton
Classified mgrs ..Kelly Connays
Teamsheets mgr ..Wing Chan
The 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 Kansas must include class and homework, or faculty or staff position. Guest columns should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be published in the Kansas newsroom the right to reedit or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kansas newsroom, 111 Shafer-Flint Hall.
Kansan editor hopes paper will show readers new faces
As a senior, I think a lot about the people I've met as a member of this University and as a journalist. I think a lot, too, about the ones I haven't met.
That is one reason newspapers exist — to bring you and me in touch with the personalities behind the faces we see every day.
The faces I've already met in this profession are the most compelling reasons I have for wanting to become a journalist.
Two of those faces belong to students whose home address is the Rumsey funeral home. For Scott Weiser and Matt Staples, funerals are a part of daily life. Now they are planning to graduate this year, after several years of living and working and learning about life and death at Rumsey. As Weiser makes plans for the future, he says he wouldn't have wanted to live anywhere else.
Another reason I have for wanting to become a journalist is the face of a homeless man I met while working for the Des Moines Register. I never knew his name. I met him at a dinner in a Salvation Army soup kitchen last
winter. At the time, he wondered how the United States could spend so much money in Somalia when he was starving in America's bread basket.
I encountered another face while researching a story about thrill businesses. The face had wild eyes and belonged to a man who strapped himself to my back just before we jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet. He jumps out of planes strapped to people's backs for a living. As we fell at 180 miles per hour, he yelled, "I'm not this (expletive) great?" over and over while I gasped for air.
I remember, too, the weather-beaten face of a biker from Topeka. She offered to hoist me on to the back of her hulking Harley Davidson chopper for the first few miles of a motorcycle ride for muscular dystrophy. I was covering the ride for the Topeka Capital-Journal in a brand new tie. She was in her everyday clothes, a studded leather riding suit. I was aed at how easily she invited me on to her Harley, her lifestyle.
Still another face my reporting led me to was that of Fred Dally, who works 12-hour days in his party store in the bowels of Detroit. Dally wants to sell his store, but no one will buy it
One of my first reasons for wanting to become a journalist can be found somewhere in the wrinkled face of Louis (pronounced Lou-ee) Bitani, 68. I featured him in a Memorial Day story I wrote for *The Detroit News* last summer. He and 317 of his fellow
crewmen survived four days in the ice waters of the Pacific waiting to be rescued after their ship, the USS Indianapolis, sank during the final days of World War II. Today Mr. Bitani is one of the few survivors of the ship left.
My story ran with information about where readers could donate money for a memorial to the ship's crew, which is scheduled to be unveiled in Indianapolis next year.
Shortly after the story ran, Mr. Bitani called to say that more than $2,000 had been donated from people in the Detroit area.
Seldom is it so easy to do our readers such a service. Rarely is a newspaper's impact on someone's life so obvious. But that is one of our most important jobs, to touch the lives of all our readers by introducing them to each other.
THE BOBBITT BILL:
Ben Grove is a Davenport, Iowa, senior in journalism.
5-DAY Mandatory Waiting
PERIOD FOR KITCHEN KNIVES
Administration closes ears to advice
After hours of mind-numbing discussion and tough decisions, KU faculty and student leaders last month came up with a consensual relationships policy they were satisfied with.
The University administration's answer last week? Thanks. But no thanks. It rejected the leaders' key revision of the policy.
Last month a faculty and student committee recommended saving three of seven degrees proposed for elimination.
The administration's response?
Thanks for playing.
Chop. All seven degrees were cut
Unit: Asexver regress were cut. With these actions, the administration is sending a clear message to faculty and student senates: It doesn't matter what solutions you come up with. We make the policies here.
KU has several governing bodies made up of faculty and students elected by their peers. These bodies act similar to a state legislature. They review, create and pass policies for Chancellor Gene Budig to consider. Ed Meyen, executive vice chancellor, and David Shulenburger, vice chancellor for academic affairs, help Budig make his decisions.
Even up to last year, the administration seemed willing to listen. Budig saved a degree last spring based on the governing bodies' recommendations after that semester's degree elimination hearings.
In but this year of sweeping change, with program review and the consensual relationships policy, Budig and the rest refuse to listen to those who will be the most affected by these changes.
Program review began in the fall of 1992-as a way for the University, strained by the Kansas Legislature's lack of funding to the University, to cut costs. The University could not afford to keep all of KU's degree programs.
But the way it did - by simply cutting the degrees after faculty and students spent so much time coming up with an alternate plan - showed that the hearings were a mere formality. Budig already had made up his mind.
That's too bad. The administration could have used some advice. One of the cuts was the M.S. in atmospheric science - the only program of its kind in the state of Kansas.
The administration recognized this and asked for input. It practically begged for it. And so the consensual relationships task force, made up of mostly students and faculty, came up with a suggested policy — one that didn't ban relationships.
And the way the administration has handled the consensual relationships policy is inexcusable.
Don't let last week's news reports of the administration's "compromise" with the faculty fool you. The only
Faculty and students were greeted last fall with a new consensual relationships policy that banned student-teacher relationships. This was automatically implemented without any input from faculty, students or their governing bodies.
real difference between the task force's proposal and the administration's is the threat of professors being fired if they sleep with students. The task force and faculty didn't want that. The administration did. Guess who won?
The policy will be voted on Thursday at University Council, the most powerful governing body of faculty and students. Other faculty and students: Write a letter to Budig.
Our voices lie in our senate leaders. If the administration continues to be so autocratic, our senate members may get fed up. They put a lot of time and energy into those senates. They may think it isn't worth it.
And our voice may be lost.
Speak out, KU. We can't afford this tragic scenario.
The administration spends hours of mind-numbing discussion with faculty and student leaders. It asks, demands and practically begs for input on a new policy.
The leaders' response?
Dan England is a Lenexa senior in Journalism.
Safety classes important for first-time gun buyers
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
We write to comment upon the issue of gun safety, highlighted tongue-in-cheek in Dave Barry's January 11 column. Recent gun-control legislation has prompted a gun-buying binge nationally, and many purchasers are first-time buyers who are alarmed at this flawed approach to "crime control." In our gun safety classes, we see many who want to "buy something now." We're glad these persons seek instruction, but are concerned about the numbers who may not do so.
Shooting sports are safely enjoyed by millions of U.S. citizens annually.
But guns require knowledgeable use. Selection of a firearm also requires knowledge and thought. Although fatal firearm accidents have declined in the past 15 years, all injury accidents are preventable. There are several certified instructors in Lawrence, and a local club offers a safety course through the Lawrence Parks and Recreation program. Cost is minimal and generally covers only actual expenses. If you are interested in attending a course, feel free to contact one of us. George R. Blondel
Director of Laboratories, Biological Sciences
Bruce Cutler
Director, Electron Microscopy Lab
Humans, not weapons responsible for violence
But the sleepy nature of Lawrence isn't the reason not to worry about guns. We've had a drive-by shooting and an attempted car-jacking (resulting in a fatality).
"Citizens not worried about guns"
headlined the front page on the first
issue of the new year. Naturally, citizens don't.
A person sufficiently irrational to
There is no such thing as a dangerous gun: Calibur, action and magazine capacity are irrelevant. In fact, there are no dangerous objects at all. There are only dangerous people.
kill over a jacket will do so whether the instrument is a gun, a knife, a car, a handy fifth-story window or even a body part.
Statistics show that one quarter or more of all homicides in this country are committed with hands and feet. Need we license, tax or ban any of these?
We need to stop blaming inanimate objects for human actions and address the mind set that holds life so cheaply that some are willing to snuff it out for ficks, and others are trying to prevent those of us who value it from being able to defend ourselves from them.
Steven P. Allen
Lawrence graduate student
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