TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2013
PAGE 4
opinion
I don't know what's more disturbing... Me asking my roommate if she had an exact knife or her saying yes.
Three weeks before I graduate, I finally found the perfect pooping spot
I really do appreciate my roommate wrapping her and her boyfriends condoms in toilet paper before throwing them away, but now we're out of toilet paper.
PSA: The toilet in the men's room in the first floor of Mallot is broken -Lucky Survivor
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Yes, residents of Spahr Library, I do have to sit here and yell at my computer all day. I'm sorry for your inconvenience.
Just wiped out on the stairs, posting an FFA before everyone who saw me does.
Am I the only one not going anywhere, eating a turkey sandwich, and watching crappy tv for thanksgiving? Seems like it, based on all the conversation around me.
Honestly, I would support getting rid of Fall Break if it meant having a week off for Thanksgiving. K-State does and I'm jealous of them for it.
I'd be less worried about pranks-
giving and more worried about
slapsgiving.
I'm not sure what was more painful... the 9 degree weather in Ames or the "football" game I was attending..
Ay yo! Midnight Memories is out! Go get it!
Everything you know about yams is a lie.
Do they sell Heelys in adult sizes?
Could make my treks around Mt.
Oread more pleasant.
If you can't handle me in my long underwear, you don't deserve me at my best.
I should just raise a certain flag outside my house and Jade Garden will know to send food.
I don't play any video game that doesn't have the "Big Head" cheat code.
Shoutout to the Chiefs for reminding me what it's like to be a Chiefs fan again.
Jon Heder really peaked with Napoleon Dynamite.
I'm just gonna need an IV of chocolate milk.
Do you think Einstein ever typed 80085 into his calculator? I like to think so.
University should provide free printing for students
As students at the University of Kansas, we are privileged in our access to top-of-the line educational resources. According to KU's 2012 financial report, which can be found on the KU website, the University spent $256,168,351 in research expenditures. Basically, the University funded over $250 million in 2012 alone on student and faculty research projects that aim to enlighten, explore and broaden our knowledge of the world. This spending, according to a Forbes poll, ranks us at 118th among both private and public schools in the U.S., in regards to research spending. These are stats that we should be proud of, but they also raise a question in my
mind. If KU can afford to be such a strong research school, shouldn't they be able to fund free printing for students?
Printing at the KU libraries has a cost of 8 cents per black-and-white page and 48 cents for color. It's not that much in the grand scheme of things. But on a tight college budget, like many of us are on that charge can and will add up. To think of it relatively, a 13-page research paper or two pages printed in color cost the same as a McChicken at McDonalds. Personally, I would rather pay for a McChicken than pay for a 13-page paper I've spent all week working on for a class that already costs money to attend. To me, this doesn't add up.
By Eddie Simon esimon@kansan.com
The University does sympathize with us - somewhat. Each semester KU students are credited with $8 of free printing. This adds up to 100 free black-and-white pages or 16.5 color pages. These free pages are indeed a nice gesture by the University, but is it really enough?
According to the website Collegeprowler.com, which is a massive online database that compares and ranks colleges for prospective students, the average annual tuition for the University of Kansas is $23,748 out-of-state and $9,678 for in-state. Tuition
does vary from person-to-person and year-to-year, but College Prowler averages and estimates to obtain fairly accurate numbers. Using these numbers, we can deduce that for an out-of-state student, approximately .00067 percent of their tuition goes toward printing funds. Therefore, the "free" $8 per semester KU allocates is only 67-thousandths of the cost of tuition for an out-of-state student. As an English major who finds myself printing nearly every day, that is not enough.
While the university is doing an exemplary job funding 12 major research centers such as the Biodiversity Institute, Life Span Institute and the Bioengineering Research Center, it's important
that the little guys aren't neglected either. Before any of us are going to be making groundbreaking research for the Life Span Institute, we're going to have to take English 101 and print off countless essays, or Calc 116 and print off pages on pages of take-home quizzes or the dozens of pages required for Accounting 200 assignments with t-counts after t-counts. The small but significant cost of printing paper does add up, and the students shouldn't have be responsible for that fee.
Eddie Simon is a senior studying English-Creative Writing from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Cyclical nature of music forecasts change for future of hip-hop
I was asked recently if I thought rap would be the music our kids laugh at us for playing when we're older. At first, I waived it off as a humorous notion. My response was "Who knows?" and the discussion ended as briefly as it had begun, but the question stuck in my mind for a few days.
I reflected on the past of other popular genres that died off, and tried to research what caused their decline. I noticed a recurring trend of genres rooted in youthful revolution that burned out when their generations grew up and moved on. Could hip-hop really end in the same way?
Hip-hop began akin to other musical movements—as a way for a group to express themselves and find identity and belonging. The culture sprung from a long-standing history of oppression and racism, which was adapted to a post-civil rights era where these systems still have a strangling effect. The music developed as a method for modern black people to fight against their oppressors in a cathartic and expressive method.
The movement grew vastly in the 80s and 90s. It grew so much that it became a mainstay in the music industry.
Its popularity made the artists successful, and the involvement of money changed how the music was made. The culture didn't necessarily dissipate because of greed, but because of the "get-rich-or-die-trying" mantra of artists and executives.
The same thing happened with another mega-genre of the past: rock 'n' roll.
Many rock artists sold 2-10 times the amount of records that top hip-hop artists ever have. It's not farfetched that capitalism can remove the passion of music, but it can't be the reason that Hip Hop dies with such a gross disparity in sales.
I looked closer at those two genres, and noticed another similarity.
Part of the reason that rock was so immense was the development of the radio and television. Without these technologies, the music could not have been as popular.
Hip-hop experienced its own technological breakthrough: the internet. It hasn't been around long enough to tell whether it will break hip-hop or not, but so far it has only enabled the spread of the music. Then again, so did television for rock.
I still hadn't found the conclusion that I was looking for yet, so I looked back at the ages of artists and fans.
followed suit.
From what I understand, Rock's most popular artists grew old, split or died. The fan base
Hip-hop's oldest modern artists and fans are currently around 40-50 years old, but there are a plethora of younger artists on the scene today. The nature of Hiphop is oriented around youth, but there does seem to be a place for the older folk. Nas, one of the most revered rappers from the 90s released an album in 2010 that was solid, yet mature. Eminem released an album this year, and he has a daughter almost as old as I am. It appears that age isn't a huge factor.
I came to the conclusion that predicting what will happen to the genre is futile. There's no way to tell. There are too many variables, too many possibilities. We can reflect on the past and understand that history repeats itself, but we cannot tell the future. Such is life.
My work wasn't completely fruitless, however.
Through analyzing the past and considering the future, I found a separate question that seemed more relevant. What will happen to us? Since music consists of what we experience, we are music. What happens to us, happens to music. We fight oppression. We live in culture. We become irrelevant. We move on. We die.
At the end, I found my answer.
Hip Hop may die off, but at least we were here to enjoy it.
Dalton Boehm is a freshman majoring in journalism from Prairie Village.
SOCIETY
Older generations put blame on youth
all it tapping out or just taking a gap "lifetime," but I just don't see a welcoming environment for young people in America.
This isn't about being shafted by the economy or the job market. This isn't even about the massive labor exploitation scheme that is the internship system. It entirely about an attitude that Generation Y is somehow responsible for the mess they're in and that shaming them is the best solution.
What I don't understand is why the Boomers and their affiliates get so violently defensive at any mention of our generation. They gather up their benefits and time-shares around them like a nesting badger and snarl at all the twenty-sometimes until they move on to beg at the next front door. There's a sense that the best way to prepare an entire generation is to shame them when they can't find a job and then shrug when they ask for a kickback.
All of this gripping and bemoaning each other isn't a generational difference, but a human one. Despite swearing up and down that we're just as generous as Barney, the vast majority of us want to keep what we've earned. As Social Security dips out of the bottom of the bucket, it's only natural that those that have earned their keep begin to hoard what they can and scare the poachers away with a rusty spike.
That's all fine and dandy. The solution to the bloated social security system is too complex to be discussed here. But our attitudes toward one another? We can figure that out quickly.
The unbelievably condescending cycle of blog posts that peppers all of our news feeds betrays an unfortunate attitude from the
seniors in our community. These articles and columns berate Gen Y, harp on the "everyone gets a trophy" mindset, and drop a few zingers about Twitter to cap it all off.
I guess I don't understand why if Generation Y has been raised wrong, then we're somehow responsible for it. I think everyone age 30 and up has colluded in a back room and decided to just blame Gen Y for all of their problems, citing our codled childhoods while pandering to the elders.
Are we all a social experiment gone wrong? Do we just kick our children out onto the street and chuck a boot at them whenever their wails are keeping us awake? What can we do to help Gen Y succeed but watch them crash and burn and hope they learn a lesson from it?
I don't have a good answer for that. Many millions of people much smarter and much more capable than me haven't figured it out yet, so I'm content with not knowing.
What I can do is ask the old folks and young'uns to get along for a little while. Long enough to knock out global warming at least. Hell, maybe we'll patch up the economy while we're at it, and have a few laughs along the way.
Wil Kenney is a sophomore majoring in English from Leawood.
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
@coco ehrlich
Who wants to celebrate Tom Hanksgiving with me? We just get drunk and watch Larry Crowne all day.
Ramanathan sending transcripts. Why do I pay an arm and a leg in tuition and then have to pay to send off a piece of paper?
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@KaasenOpinii Free printing, and parking
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