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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, December 2, 1988
Fun in the desert sun
War games must be a good time indeed.
Just like chrome and plastic six-shooters
and rat-a-tat-tat submachine gun in the
backyard. Not real war, mind you. No
deaths, no mutilations, no destruction—just practice, in case.
military maneuvers, the less colloquial term for the complex logistics and exercises that take place regularly all over the world to mimic war, seem to be in vogue lately.
Particularly in the Middle East, where the Reagan Administration has been busy demonstrating American military oomph behind the tough talk from Washington.
The Georgian did the talking. Now the Californian is wielding the big stick in gunboat diplomacy worthy of T.R. himself. Unfortunately, America's ability to intimidate with armed might has waned since Roosevelt's day, and since the postwar Pax Americana.
First in Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Orman last month, U.S. forces held a trial run of a tiny forerunner of the full-fledged Rapid Deployment Force in the Bright Star '82 exercises. Then this week, the U.S. announced plans for formal military cooperation with Israel against a Soviet threat in the Middle East, including joint maneuvers with the Israelis.
There is justification for such activities if they are needed for practicing what must be avoided at almost all cost—a direct confrontation with the Soviets. In other words, total war.
But danger supersedes the fun of war games if their principal purpose is a flashy display of power. They might serve only to inflame and fuel the fires of paranoia that burn brightly in the Soviet Union, and cause that nation to respond with a few flashes of its own.
Semester's end brings pain to KU's many procrastinators
Thanksgiving for many students is the most suspect of holidays. In variably it is situated before the crucial week that, for procrastinators, determines grade-giving. And the cautious mind is reluctant to offer thanks for a holiday. A semester's work in one week has been tested.
After a number of semesters, one improves.
This year I drifted into Wonder Week with
confidence. When I walked into the newsroom on
Monday (all columns are due two days before
KEVIN
HELLIKER
publication), I found a note in my mailbox: It was mandatory that my column be submitted on time today—something I hadn't managed all semester.
An hour before deadline my column was typed.
Then someone read it and directed my attention to one of last week's papers.
"Did you read this column?" she asked, point
pointedly. I hadn't.
"It's the same as yours."
She was right. My column, in essence, had already been written, published and responded to with letters to the editor: the price one pays to the editor is the price one's own paper. I had one hour to try again.
I've found that on such occasions, when one should move quickly, the mind becomes obsessed with time. I had in my back pocket a schedule detailing the academic activities with which I would occupy myself every hour of this week.
But I had not planned to write this column twice. Now every item on the table was necessarily pushed back, spilling a crucial assignment into next week when it would no longer be accepted. Undeniably, I thought, one assignment was lost.
The first fatality of Wonder Week has an
awakening effect. Reality evokes a feeble "Oh...
from those of us who do it doubt."
A semester, in particular, does not seem real until the first loss is suffered. Then the past wasted weeks become as mentally structured as a poem about the unhappy fate of a
He means that he grows old. He agonizes over weeks spent watching MASH, Benny Hill, the movie "Foxcatcher."
Echoes of his old delusion torment him, "And indeed there will be time."
"Why do I do it— semester after semester?" he wonders. Because he loves it. There is nothing so exciting as pressure, and nothing so trite yet irresistible as handling it with grace.
By the time this metaphorical mosaic had passed through my head, deadline was upon me. And I still didn't the vague idea what I would write about.
I recalled then one of my teachers reading to the class this message he'd received just hours before a paper was due. A student had written, "The rabbit is dead."
The message made reference to an article by Hunter Thompson in which the author compared his procrastinating tendencies to "whatever instinct it is that causes a krabbitra to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car."
This instinct, Thompson thought, was born out of boredom with rabbits' daily routines: "Eat, sleep, +14%&, hop around a bush now and then, eat what I ate," he says. "and lackabrats are much alike. I thought."
Always willing to look on the bright side, I viewed my present predicament as exciting—a cheap thrill. My columns had always been late and overdue. ? Semesters, unlike speeding cars, don't kill.
Granted, my timetable for the week was messed up, but that was no matter. Tonight I would sleep less, work harder and by Friday the road would be crossed.
"When a jackrabbit gets addicted to roadrunner, it hampson removes it." It is only a time between a time binge and a time binge.
A fear of this fate ruins many Thanksgiving dinners.
Why hasn't someone done something?
The end of another semester. Everyone is busily studying for finals and finishing term papers. And here's a few things to think about while you're studying . . .
Why is the HOPE award—the only teaching award given solely by students—presented to the alumni side of the football university instead of the student side? It seems the University has made a commitment through alumni tapes, a university going, without students there would be no university.
Will there ever be "good" dorm food? When you are serving 600 people there is no way the food will be as good as if you are serving four, but somehow cold french fries and liquid eggs just don't make it. In fact, a friend of mine who lives in a dorm provides her with a sure-fire way to lose weight. Unfortunately, she didn't need to lose any.
While I'm on dorms, how about those pipes that run through the rooms? Will anybody ever come up with a way to insulate the holes they run into? What kind of insulation to listen to every word their neighbors say?
have to park in spaces reserved for handicapped drivers. Walking a few extra feet won't kill anybody, and it does not take that long, either. I know "I'm only going to be here for a minute," although more likely it will be five or 10 minutes. I have a handicapped driver come along during that time?
Three snickers for Parking Services' latest feeble attempt to operate KU parking lots efficiently. To cram more cars into an overflowing parking lot, Parking Services last year designated certain rows of the dorm lots for compact cars only. They put up signs to that effect and I had hoped, I have got it right. Parking Services employee get out his or her little ruler to find out whether a car parked in those exclusive rows is within the six-foot-wide limit.
Then there are the drivers. I always wonder why people are so stubborn and lazy that they
Also in contention for the most obnoxious driver award are the people who are too cheap to
BRIAN LEVINSON
pay 50 cents to park in the O Zone, the big parking lot south of Robinson Center. Instead, these people consider it their right to park in the free stalls on the east side of the lot that are reserved for people who need to go to Watkins Hospital.
On to academics. Is anybody else worried about being overlooked when the time comes to interview for jobs because he or she went to college to learn instead of to get a 4.0 GPA? That's not to say that anyone who has a 4.0 took only "puid" classes. Nothing could be further from employers with some way of evaluating the classes listed on a transcript so that a student who challenged himself and took tough classes isn't punished for not having a 4.0.
And let's give students a fair chance to evaluate classes and their abilities to perform in them before it is too late. Specify what information you want to give the exam or assign a paper and have it graded before the exam.
last day to choose the credit no credit option, or before the last day to drop.
I'm sick of taking classes that seem interesting from the course descriptions in the catalog only to find out too late that they are duds or that the prerequisites listed in the catalog were inadequate and I'm unprepared for the class. Not all students have the time to see an adviser in each department they want to take a class in.
How about Watson Library? Why is it so stuff? Where are the nice big easy chairs like those they have in the Union? Students need to be comfortable to study. I have yet to meet anyone who is really comfortable in those horrid wooden things the library calls chairs.
Finally, someone should remind professors that there is more to college than just classes. The workload they give their students is likely multiplied five times because most students take five classes, a fact they seem to have forgotten.
1. I always get a big kick out of professors who ask whether anyone watched the great documentary on television last night or read the latest best seller. Who has got time to watch TV? One of the saddest parts of college is that for four years many students stop reading for fun. They are so sick of reading when they get done with their textbooks that the last thing they need is an afternoon of reading and that after not reading for fun for four years, many people find it a hard thing to do again.
Someone once told me that in addition to learning and getting a degree, college was the last chance I would have to have so much fun and freedom. It would be four years without many responsibilities but with many opportunities. Somehow that doesn't go along with having so much homework that one never does anything but go to class, study and work.
Letters to the Editor
West Campus crowd eschews 'Salina Piece' sculpture
To the Editor:
The following is an open letter to Robert Cobb,
executive vice chancellor:
Don W. Steenles
Chief of environmental geology and geophysica section and James R. McCauley Research associate
A story in the Nov. 24 Kansan stated, "The dispute over the location of the 'Salina Piece' abstract sculpture should be effectively laid to rest when the sculpture is moved to West Campus." This sentence must have been based on the assumption that the only ones who would disagree with this new location are also laid to rest—in pioneer Cemetery.
Another possibility that would still allow Mr. Simpson to have his tax write-off would be to have him take it back and donate it to the Kansas School for the Blind.
We, the living residents of West Campus, would like a voice in this matter to air our objections to the proposed rule.
Precedent has been set in the area of hideous art on West Campus with the presence of "kearus" in front of Nichols Hall and the "outhouse roof" look at Moore Hall. However, our concerns transcend artistic and architectural taste into the area of safety.
We urge that the safety study of this monstrosity include conditions of dynamic rather than just static loading for reasons of earthing. We have climbed around on this piece during a moderate earthquake of the type that occurs every few decades in Kansas, the campus could incur a tragedy of the "Hytt Regency West" variety. Lastly, we on Campus West believe that we can benefit from the security of the main campus. We take the liberty of pointing out that there are at least two safe installation sites on West Campus. One is in the bottom of the pond west of Parker Hall. The other possibility is to include "Salina Piece" as part of the strutting frame of the framework of the new Moon Hall annex.
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An unfair approach
To the Editor:
The passing of Dean Alderson is a great personal loss to me, and I know it is to many other people who were loved by him.
"We said, 'taken.
To the Editor:
Mike's letter to the editor stated that he was both misquoted and quoted out of context. He repeatedly told Schallau that he did not leave the house because of racism. Schallau obviously had no concern for the facts in this article. We have felt you have blown the entire situation up, trying to find something that is just not there. It is our hope that in the future we will be closely and try to maintain a professional attitude. But now we know how Carol Burnett must have felt.
Secondly, it was stated that we pledged McGlothen "sight unseen." Every prospective member is discussed and voted on. If Schalau would have talked to an active member, this too would have been made clear. McGlothen McGlothen would have attended a rush party scheduled for the next day.
In response to your Nov. 19 article,
"Fraternity lines drawn out in bibs and white
clothing," the New York Times noted.
First, the "member" of our fraternity on which many of your allegations are based, Dave McQueen, was never initiated as an active member of Phi Kappa Sigma. In the article, McQueen said that there had been a meeting to discuss whether he would be membership (Mcglothen was also not an active member) but that we did not because "it would have looked racist." This topic never arose at any meeting of the members of Phi Kappa Sigma and has not been addressed to confirm this she would have discovered such
Love Sherman
Overland Park junior
for the men of Phil Kappa Sigma
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Evanston, Ill., senior
A disgruntled MU grad? Hardy. I'm a Jayhawk ('C42), as is my wife, to whom beating Crybly U. constitutes a successful season. I am shamed of my absence in my life, I am ashamed of my mla mater.
Item: partial jerseys. Even the most notorious "tough guy" schools have stopped such dishabille years ago. It's strictly brown-shoes-with-a tuxedo stuff.
To the Editor:
Part of the sorrow I feel is the realization that only in death has he received recognition, and even that has been inadequate. But perhaps that's because the qualities he possessed were so elusive, and in trying so hard to bring others' qualities out, he purposely left himself behind.
I have just watched the highlights of the KU-MU football game, thanks to the University of Missouri football highlights program, and I'm bitter.
John Best
Item: Tearing down goalposts at any time is also old-kid kid stuff that went out with rumble seats. But it transcends childishness when benighted students do it well before the game (and when they lose) or by causing penalties that result in a touchdown for the opponent. Erresurable stunidity.
It was simply through the constructive manner in which he lived his life that he had the greatest impact on others. He took time to indicate and help people who were in doing so, made others feel special as well.
I hope the entire Jayhawk community recognizes its loss, and in doing so, will reach out to one another in his memory. It's the only recognition Dean Alderson would have wanted.
Alum a bit displeased
Alderson was a gentle man with an in-doubtable spirit, always more interested in his students' advancement than his own. While an accomplished administrator, he carried the notion of perseverance, courage and commitment beyond his office.
He was a listener, a giver, a responder, a silent doer—a friend. He will always be a reminder to me throughout my life of what a man can be.
Both of these things prompt me to reconsider my contributions to KU. Any school that tolerates such hick shemanigans and wanton behavior will likely serve my loyalty or need my financial help.
Richard P.Trubey Bella Vista, Ariz.
Lesson in history
I find it fascinating that Connie Schallau, in researching her three-part menagerie on the history of black participation in sorority rush, could find so many alumnae ready to malign their former chapters and so few who could give accurate interpretations of rush procedures.
To the Editor:
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Many of the procedures and practices quoted from former members of sororities were mendacious, to say the least. But perhaps the greatest use for Scholalla's story is, as I have said, history.
Anne Cortopassi St. Louis junior
Incidents that occurred between 1977 and 1979 should be regarded as such. They should not be treated as barometers for present or future sorority polices, as the Nov. 18 headline, "Black women find many sorority doors shut," indicated.
Having written this letter before the article on present conditions, I would like to justify this early opinion by saying that Schlaau's first article, in printing specific sorority names and formatting, was in itself damaging to those sororities at a crucial time just before spring formal rush.
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