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Friday, September 15, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Equipment shortage leaves classes with '70s technology
Like the equipment itself, the shortage of audio-visual gear on the KU campus is getting old.
Too often, we find ourselves gritting our teeth and struggling through class sessions that fall apart after our professors' requests for projectors are denied.
Too often we've heard professors say, "I had planned to use a projector for this, but . . . . .
a project for a major university in the age of information, it is ludicrous that professors must resort to describing the intricacies of governments, the human body or even a classic piece of art using crude blackboard drawings.
During fiscal year 1989, media services turned down about 500 requests for audio-visual equipment.
3 requests for assistance. That's 500 times a professor's lecture plans had to be changed at the last minute. That's 500 times students had to sit through makehift lectures. That's 500 times that educational opportunities were compromised because of something as pundane as a piece of equipment.
mindhale la-si p.h. director, a director of media services, said that the life expectancy of a 16-millimeter projector was eight years. Other universities might try to stretch that useful life to 10 years. KU's protectors are going on 17, he said.
That means that even if a professor and class are lucky enough to get a projector on any given day, the likelihood of equipment failure is increased.
For two years, media services' annual budget has been $26,000. Marion estimated that replacing outdated and worn out equipment would require $100,000 for three years.
equipment would be Although the purse is empty for new equipment on the Lawrence campus, the University is planning for a fiber-optic system that would link the Regents Center in Overland Park to the Lawrence campus. The idea is to broadcast graduate level classes to students in the Kansas City area.
It's an interesting idea, but it seems ironic that while students on the Lawrence campus are stuck with the technology of the '70s in their classrooms, part-time students in Kansas City would be able to utilize '90s technology to take classes in their living rooms.
Ric Brack for the editorial board
Bill outlawing flag-burning violates constitutional rights
Here they go again.
It's time for someone to blow out the flame before this flag-burning issue ignites further.
The House has passed a bill outlawing flag-burning by a 380- 38 margin.
buring issue ignites in the fire. There should be better things to worry about. In a time of billion-dollar budget deficits and rampant drug use, is this the only thing the House can find to do?
An educated public should get worried when 380 of our representatives jump on a bandwagon that promises to do little but ride straight over our constitutional rights to symbolic speech.
speech. The representatives think that by voting for an anti-flag- mutilation bill they will be gaining our votes when they run for re-election. If they think we want our rights to be restricted because of the recent flag-burning furor, so be it. But that kind of pandering to poorly thought-out public opinion deserves to be punished.
punished. No representative who votes for a bill or amendment that would restrict our rights to any kind of speech should be re-elected. Period.
elected. Period.
Granted, burning a flag may offend some people. That's the point of burning a flag. It may be immature, but it's symbolic speech and it's protected by the First Amendment.
A bunch of protesters may not have much better to do than to set fire to a flag, but we should hope that our people in Washington, D.C., have more to worry about than what those protestors are doing.
Maybe someday this issue will burn itself out.
Maybe someday this issue will burn its out.
David Stewart for the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are David Stewart, Stan Diel, Brett Brenner, Ric Brack, Daniel Niemi, Craig Welch, Kathy Walsh, Deb Gruver, Thom Clark and Tiffany Harness.
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Open letter to a racist in Lawrence
There is someone I'd like to say "hello" to through this column.
I've had a problem communicating with him because I've never known his name. I'm not even sure if he's still strolling Jayhawk Boulevard, so I bone he gets this message.
hope in great this message.
I've actually never met him. But I've seen him many times, and when I have, I've always been frightened.
Highlight... time I've passed him on campus I've looked down at the sidewalk or crossed the street. I've done anything to avoid him. Unfortunately, we've always seemed to end up in the same places: the Kansas Union, the Crossing, some dark campus building.
pus burning.
Anyway, this is how the story goes. Friends and I were at a party last spring across the street from the Douglas County Law Enforcement Center. It was a typical college party: lots of beer, people and above-average noise. Movies were even projected on the wall of the police station. Pretty daring.
So we were having a good time.
So we were having a hard time. School was almost out, and the weather was great. It was that in-between time of the year: not too cold, not too hot. No rain, either.
But something happened during that party that I'll never forget.
Deb Gruver
Editorial board
There are few things I've done during my four years at KU that I later have regretted. What I did not do at this party is one of those things. And it's a biggie.
wiggle.
When a man at the party — the man that I've
been speaking of — beat up a Black man, simply because he was Black, I did not react immediately. I did not try to stop the fight. I did not scream for help or run to the police station or make a phone call.
I simply stood and watched in disbelief like everyone else.
But I wasn't indifferent.
But I wasn't nicer, here.
I was very frightened, angry and sad, but for some reason, I did nothing to help that man. My friends and I later talked to the head-shaven, leather-clad man who beat him up, explaining that what he had done was wrong, ignorant and in no way justified. But it didn't one bit of good for the bloody, bruised man who left that party.
His life changed that night. I am sure.
His life changed that night. I said to him, For what he had heard all his life about racism was true. Right here in Lawrence, Kan., it was true. Racism doesn't happen just in the South or in "Mississippi Burning," where supposedly right-ground FBI agents save the day.
Racism occurs everywhere. It hasn't gone away
with the riots and picket signs. It's a little more subtle now, but it still haunts us and occasionally reminds us that it's around.
reminds The man who was beat up at that party, in front of so many people, now knows what it's like to experience racism. I'm sure he's not as trusting as he might have been. And I imagine he didn't go to many parties for a while.
I hope it didn't defeat him.
So I'd like to get a message to that guy who shouted "white supremacy" at the top of his lungs and smiled when the fight was over, the guy who made it seem that the reputation surrounding "skinheads" was true. Even though this guy was an exception, I know that not all head-shaven people are racist.
This is the message, some semesters later; I'm sorry that I did not report you to the police. I'd like to think if the same thing happened today, that's what I do.
But I haven't seen you this fall. Maybe you have graduated or left KU, and I won't have to worry about seeing you again. I'd like that.
about seeing you here. I wish for you some tolerance and compassion, a bit of understanding and a whole lot of peace.
Because I really can't imagine that you're happy with yourself or your life.
- Debi Gruver is a Lawrence senior majoring in journalism.
Shallow ads mark Esquire's touch
No intelligent man can afford the $$$$$$$$$$
The best copy, the prettiest engraving, the classiest picture is found in a clothier's ad:
Why is it that the ads in Esquire magazine are so much more interesting — and revealing — than the articles? Is it because they cost more, and you get what you pay for? Here's another demonstration of the efficacy of the free market.
▶ To buy a garment only for its label
▶ to assemble a fall wardrobe, without expert advice
To pay good money for a suit that was glued, not sewn, together.
sewn, together.
> To be passed from one department salesman to
To confuse style with fashion.
▶ To contour style with tassel.
▶ To own a closet of forgettable clothing.
The ad begins to go downhill from there, but if you don't think too carefully about the message, if you just let its cadenced words roll over you, you're left with the kind of hushed assurance that entering a good, understated men's shop will give you. Thought is, of course, fatal to this kind of appreciation; If no intelligent man can afford these choices, does that mean the unintelligent can? Isn't the very object of some articles of clothing, like a gentleman's tie, to be forgettable? As the advice goes, if you can remember a tie, it was the wrong choice.
stu to raise such playmate objections is to miss the ad's narrow point. It is even to risk being churlish. The whole object of such advertisements is to create an atmosphere in which anything as nigging as thought is rendered unnecessary, and assurance replaces insecurity. Magazines like
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnis
Esquire traditionally have played the role of a Guide for the Perplexed, passing on the received wisdom of graduates to the incoming freshman. Their purpose is to alleviate the terrible, gnawing fear at the heart of every young man that he might look like a jerk. Clothes make the man, they say, oblivious to the possibility that it might be the other way around.
Let us not underestimate the value of such ads, for they deal not only in outer garments but inward attitudes. Once properly informed, we can prepare not only a face to meet the other faces, but a mentality. Here, slip on this piece of sophistication with a
- note how well it hangs. It goes well with a certain intimacy; see how it brings out your reserve. Dress for success.
The articles seem but a continuation of the ads; but offer a kind of thick subtlety, a deep probe of the shimmies. This issue features a piece about Peter Jennings, that most fashionable of anchormen. The bathing beauties of the '40s have given way to intellectual cheesecake; this issue offers a portfolio of black-and-white photographs of prominent women by the late Robert Mapplethorpe. There is also one of those painful tributes to a remarkable artist — short story writer Raymond Carver — that consists mainly of the writer's recollections of forgettable experiences with the great man. ("Will Shakespeare didn't remember the first time he met me, but..." Only a bare-knuckle critique of Dan Dorfman, CNN's lovable little stock toot, seems out of place — as if it had wandered in from Nat Fleischer's old Ring magazine.
The rest of the faithfully reflects our slightly flagging zeitgeist. That's why magazines like Esquire leave one all too accountably depressed like those catalogs you find in the seat pockets of airliners — the ones full of things you're relieved not to own. They are interesting mainly because of the consuming picture they paint of U.S. society.
What this issue of Esquire reflects is an America entering the '90s uncertainty, looking for guidance. That may explain the air of nostalgia that keeps recurring in its pages. How we long for the kind of history that is safely behind us: American Express advertises its services with a picture of a 1933 XK129. The last thing in sports cars is one that brings back fond memories of 1962. A new wristwatch is advertised against the backdrop of a 1940-ish airplane fuselage full of assuring rivets.
It definitely looks like the decade of George Bush. Not because Bush is insecure — he is secure enough to be his ordinary self, which is a remarkable feat in this age — but because U.S. society is uncertain enough to cling to such security. If the tone and calculation of Esquire's best ads are an indication, and they are, this is a society looking for assurance but not sure how to achieve it, or just what it is. In short, a society of Dan Quayles.
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist.
CAMP UHNEELY
CLASS, I APPLOYIZE FOR THE
POOR QUANTITY OF THIS
DEMONSTRATION OF THE FOOD-
CHAIN. But As YOU KNOW, THE
AUDIO-VISUAL DEPARTMENT
IS SHORT ON EQUIPMENT.
HERE THE ALGORITHM IS IN
HIS NATURAL HABITAT LOOKING
PAST THE NEARBY FISH FOR
ANOTHER PREY...
BY SCOTT PATTY
... THE RABBIT, SITTING HEUPLESSLY UNAWARE OF THE DANGER NEARBY...UNTIL IT'S TWO LATE.