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Thursday, January 13, 1994
OPINION
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
4.200.21
VIEWPOINT
Senate should reaffirm commitment to meetings
Each April, Student Senate candidates pledge their devotion to Senate. However, once elected, senators' actions tell a different story.
Fewer than half of the senators attended the entire Dec. 8 Senate meeting. Though this meeting is the most blatant example of the attendance issue, absenteeism remains an ongoing problem.
Senate policy states that senators who have "three unexcused absences or six absences of any kind shall be immediately suspended..." The attendance policy includes both Senate meetings and committee meetings.
In committee meetings, senators debate and discuss possible bills. In Senate meetings, those bills are voted on.
Although both Senate and committee meetings are important, it is imperative that senators attend all Senate meetings. It is in Senate meetings that elected representatives' voices are heard. Each time a senator misses a Senate meeting, the voters' that senator represents are effectively silenced. Senators must make attending Senate meetings a priority.
Senators have a responsibility to attend every meeting. KU students elect their senators to make decisions that will affect all students. Although an occasional absence is not unreasonable, repeated absences, excused or unexcused, weaken Senate as a whole.
COLLEEN McCAIN AND NATHAN OLSON FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The following is a list of absences at Student Senate meetings during the fall semester. Accurate records of committee meeting attendance were not available
Name were not available.
Rob Alfred 0 0 0
John Altevogt 4 1 5
Jill Bechtel 1.5 0 1.5
John Becker 1 0 1
Clint Bloom 1 0 1
Chad Boeger 3 1.5 4.5
Jeff Bottenberg 1.5 0.5 2
Toya Bowles 1 0 1
Christy Brown 3.5 0.5 4
Catherine Bubb 0.5 0.5 1
Alfonso Canedo 1 4 5
Tonya Cole 3 0 3
Matt Cowan 0 0.5 0.5
Patrick Eagleman 1 1 2
Peter Falt 0 0 0
Jon Foral 2 0 2
Lisa Golzar 0 1.5 1.5
Michael Guemple 1 2.5 3.5
Jody Hagerman 0 0.5 0.5
Dan Hare 1 0 1
Julie Harris 0.5 0 0.5
Travis Harrod 0.5 0 0.5
Gretchen Havner 1.5 0.5 2
Octavio Hinojosa 2 1 3
Katie Hutchinson 0 0 0
Andrew Irwin 0 0 0
Chander Jayaraman 0 1 1
Kara Laricks 1 0 1
Phillip Mabry 0 3 3
Munish Malik 1 3 4
Tim Marks 0 0 0
Ken Martin 3 2 5
Eric Medill 0 0 0
Eric Mersmann 1 0.5 1.5
Nikiki Millard 1.5 0 1.5
Bill Mills 2 1 3
Michael Moyer 1 1 2
Shannon Newton 1 0.5 1.5
Ann Perry 2 0.5 2.5
Alan Pierce 0 0 0
Hillary Price 2.5 1.5 4
Jerry Rank 1.5 0 1.5
Michelle Ray 2.5 1 3.5
Kristina Redding 1 1 2
Sherman Reeves 0 0 0
Michelle Rolfe 1.5 1 2.5
Steve Simpson 2 1 3
Heidi Snyder 0 0.5 0.5
Kelly Staples 0 2 2
Bradley Stasiulis 1 1 2
Carey Stuckey 1.5 0 1.5
Trevor Thompson 1 0.5 1.5
Jill Tibbetts 0 0.5 0.5
Alan Tikwart 0 0 0
Andrea Toll 1.5 0 1.5
Shanda Vangas 1.5 0 1.5
Paul Wolters 0.5 0.5 1
Jennifer LaMeil 0 0 0
Kim Cocks 0 0 0
Christine Campobasso 0 0 0
Jessica Bobker 0 0 0
Barbara Gelb 0.5 0 0.5
Lojen Tsao 0 0 0
Stuart Waldman 0 2 0
LaMell did not become a Senate member until Oct. 6. The final six members did not become members until Nov. 17 and therefore could attend only the last two Senate meetings. Half absences result from the fact that roll is taken twice during the meeting.
KANSAN STAFF
BEN GROVE, Editor
LISA COSMILLO, Managing editor
General manager, news adviser
TOM EBLEN
BILL SKEET, Systems coordinator
Editors
Assistant Managing Editor ...Dan England
Assistant to the editor ...J. R. Clairborne
News ... Kristi Fogler, Katie Greenwald,
... Todd Sellff
Editorial ... Colleen McCain
... Nathan Olson
Campus ... Jesse DeHaven
Sports ... David Dorsey
Photo ... Doug Hesse
Features ... Sara Bennett
JUSTIN GARBERG Business manager
JENNIFER BLOWEY Retail sales manager
JEANNE HINES
Ruinasa Staff
Campus sales mgr ..Jason Eberly
Regional Sales mgr ..Troy Tawerley
National A Co-op sales mgr ..Robin Kring
Special Sessions mgr ..Shelly McConnell
Production mgrs ..Laura Guth
...Gretchen Koehletheimtch
Marketing director ..Amy Casey
Creative director ..John Carlton
Classified mgr ..Kelly Connelys
Teamsheets 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 Kansas must include class and hometown, or faculty or staff position. Guest columnists should be typed, double-spaced and fewer than 700 words. The writer will be pleased. The Kanan reserves the right to reject or edit letters, guest columns and cartoons. They can be mailed or brought to the Kanan newsroom. 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall.
Condom commercials effective; necessary for informing public
The government, through Surgeon General Joyceyln Elders, has unveiled a series of frank, relatively graphic AIDS-education public service announcements for radio and TV aimed at people between the ages of 18 and 25. That's me, so I've been paying pretty close attention to this story. And the message is clear and logical: Condoms save lives.
The ads themselves are pretty well done. One features a little animated latex condom hopping down from a dresser drawer and scurrying across the floor, tippeeing past a sleeping cat, and leaping onto...a bed where a couple is making love. Oops! Too late! But that's the whole point. The voice-over says: "It would be nice if latex condoms were automatic. But since they're not, using them should be."
Not what you're used to seeing when "Melrose Place" cuts away to a commercial, is it? Or maybe it is. After all, we live in a society which teaches us that, if you drink the right beer, large-breasted women in uncomfortable looking bikinis will want to be with you. It's nice to see the other side
get addressed once in a while
Our conservative friends are, predictably, outraged. These are the folks that think they can get through to hormone-addled young people by saying Don't Have Sex, End Of Discussion. Near as I can figure it, their various arguments can be divided into two general groups.
There is the argument that frank talk about condoms on TV will put the federal stamp of approval on premarital sex. Perhaps this is so. But when you consider some of the other things that the federal government has put a
stamp of approval on in the past — Salvadoran death squads, Contra drug running, and the insane arms race — safer whoopee begins to look pretty innocuous.
The second argument, which I don't entirely understand and which has come into vogue in recent years, suggests that condom use does not decrease the risk of AIDS due to the allegedly high failure rate of condoms.
What? It's true that condoms fail more often than they ought to. This is, more often than not, due to lack of information on the condom's proper use. The same folks who say the condom failure rate is too high are the ones preventing the information from reaching the people who need it. The Centers for Disease Control, in a study of couples in which one partner was infected with the HIV virus and who used latex condoms correctly, found not one instance of transmission from the infected partner to the uninfected one. Unfortunately, we are dealing with people who do not like to let facts get in the way of a good
argument.
What I like about these ads is that they concede that the best way to avoid AIDS is to abstain from sex altogether but do not assume that young people are necessarily going to. When the question of whether or not to have sex is approached from a moralistic position as opposed to a logical position, it is easy to lose perspective and blow the whole argument. I'd wouldn't be surprised if this campaign will actually be more effective in persuading young people to abstain than all the fire-and-brimstone sermons in the world, because this campaign makes people aware of their choices and gives them some idea of the positive and negative aspects of each choice.
Will these ads have any effect? Only time will tell. One thing we do know, though, and it's something our conservative friends ought to consider, is that doing nothing will definitely result in a lot more people dying.
Paul Henry is a Tacoma, Wash. graduate student in journalism.
Love of music an old friend
At the start of this semester, I had to break up with an old friend.
This friend carried me through the hard times and made the good ones even better.
She warmed my heart on cold nights. She was my shadow when I was lonely.
You've had a friend like this, haven't you? In kindergarten? Or maybe you have one now.
“WELL?” she screeched. I jumped. I then drew in a deep breathe and told the lady, OK, eliminate jazz.
Well, my friend was music.
And I'm really going to miss her.
And with one punch on the computer, our friendship was over. For the first time since I was 9, I would not be playing in a band.
I stammered for a second. I needed this class to graduate. What do I do now?
It was one month ago when I stared at the computer screen, not believing my eyes. Why does my jazz band class have CONFLICT in dull green letters stamped after it?
"What's this?" the lady blurted out. "OHI. I see. They must have switched times on you. Media Ethics now starts at 10:30 on Monday and Wednesday."
The same time as my jazz band.
As I stumbled out, stunned, I remembered the good times we had shared.
I remembered when we first met. I was an awkward fourth-grader. I could barely hold the trombone in my hands. I blew mightily into the instrument. A note! My music teacher clapped. "That was pretty good for your first time!" she said.
I was hooked.
The men's basketball band and the Marching Jayhawks would take too much of my time this year. But I could still play in jazz band. Not anymore.
And so began a beautiful friendship.
It let me travel to places I couldn't
even dream about with any other activity except for athletics.
I represented Kansas with my high school when we marched in George Bush's inauguration parade in Washington, D.C.
I traveled with the basketball band to almost every NCAA tournament game. I was there in 1991 at the regional semifinal, when we beat Indiana and Arkansas. I was there in 1993 at the semifinal, when we beat California and Indiana (and I wrote a column about the trip).
Music is still in my soul. I listen to it constantly.
I was there when Kansas lost in last year's Final Four. I cried with Roy Williams after the UTEP game. And at every game, I could smell the mixture of sweat and hardwood, because I was so close to the court.
My mother, skeptical at first about my commitment to music, told me right before my first year at KU,
"Thankgod for your music. Because it saved your life."
But music gave me confidence as well. I was shy when I went to junior high school, and I didn't have many friends. Music was something I could feel good about.
But a small ache will occupy my heart where my music once did. If you aren't playing music, especially not with others, when you have for long, just listening to it isn't the same thing. It's like being with friends or an old flame.
We had one last fling. In a smoky dimly-lit bar, I played with my jazz band for the last time at our year-end concert. The trumpets sang, the trombones hummed and the saxophones screamed. The drums popped. The bass rang out with the guitar. It was as close to paradise as I can reach. It was a remarkable goodbye. And it will make me miss it even more.
But every time I need her, I'll think back on that night and smile.
Soon I'll be too busy to miss it like do now. The paper will keep me occipied, and my friends will keep me happy.
But just like any old friend you don't see anymore. I'll think about her.
And right now, my loss feels just like any old breakup.
It hurts.
Dan England is a Lenexa senior majoring in Journalism.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Templin Hall residents fighting worthy battle
I would like to clear up a few misunderstandings about Colleen McCain's "Viewpoint" article about Templin students fighting for their rights.
First of all, she writes, "The Templin Hall residents ... are fighting an inane battle." This is not true. In the Spring 1994 KU Timetable of Classes, where University rules and regulations are printed, under the Bill of Rights (Article 2, Section D) it states, "Students will be exempt from disciplinary action, except for violation of a published... University or Regents rule or regulation. Rules and regulations shall be fully and clearly promulgated in advance of the supposed violation" (p. A20). The University rule being pushed at us says, "...[P]hysical conduct of a nature [not "actions of a sexual nature" as Ms. McCain writes] constitutes sexual harassment when, (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment" (p. A25). What does "physical conduct of a nature" mean? It sounds to me like it's talking about hand gestures or some kind of touching or assault.
Besides, some of the pictures that
Also she says, "...residents' doors technically are part of the hallway." Is that always true? Or is it only when the door is closed? The door is in my room when it is open. How then can it be considered part of the hallway? Should it be able to put up a picture on my door when it is open, because it is inside my room.
were put on the door weren't even put up by the residents living in the particular room. If someone else puts a picture on my door, according to Article 22, B.2 (p. A23), I can not "knowingly and without proper consent or authorization remove, use, misappropriate, or sell the property of another person or the University."
I think that I have already proven that Ms. McCain is wrong in saying, "No justifiable reason exists for displaying these pictures outside rather than inside their rooms." But I can't help but say something about the last sentence: "A battle about bare-chested women is not worth anyone's time or effort." Jennifer Warren, Ottawa senior, thinks otherwise or else she wouldn't have sent a letter to the editor called "Resident's complaint shows his immaturity." But I would have to agree with Ms. McCain. So why doesn't anyone that opposes us just give up.
Dan Murrow
Kansas City freshman
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