Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, October 7, 1980
New grading is a plus
The University of Kansas' new optional plus-minus grading system certainly won't flunk out next semester. Or for that matter, any other semester.
Acting Chancellor Del Shankel approved the new policy Thursday. It will take effect next spring. Under the new policy, a student would receive 3.7 grade points for an "A-minus," 3.3 points for a "B-plus," three points for a "B," and so on.
For starters, the new policy would increase the chances of a student being given a fair grade. If a student were a "C-plus" student, the grade would say "C-plus," not just "C." There's a difference.
Each school in the University will have the option of adopting the new policy. There's no reason to reject it.
The new policy also would make it more difficult for a student to beat the grading system. A student would not be able to do
the bare minimum of work for an "A" and expect to receive four grade points. Instead, the student would receive only 3.7 points. There's a difference.
In some schools of the University, grade inflation is rampant. The new policy would make it easier to distinguish the outstanding students from the very good ones. Under a plus-minus grading system, individuals would be more likely to compete against themselves, not against the grading system itself.
Finally, the plus-minus system would provide more breathing room for instructors when grading time arrived. Borderline disputes would be more easily avoided.
In short, the new policy upgrades a degraded grading system. Students may not receive higher marks, but they will get more accurate report cards.
Watkins' campaign strategy could doom election chances
When Dan Watkins held his first major press conference last month, he presented nine pages of tables, figures and reprinted journal articles, all properly footnoted.
The subject of all the research: Republican Rep. Larry Winn Jin "Wukins" opponent in the TIME survey.
For 30 minutes, Watkins strongly criticized
Winn's attendance and voting records during his
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14 years in Congress, questioning the integrity of effectiveness by carefully illustrating each point with handwritten notes.
Nine days later, he issued a 16-page press release containing more details of the case and asserting more closely
In his second major press conference Sept. 17, Watkins set out to focus on issues but again he remains a big problem.
Armed with nearly 100 pages of research, Watkins will examine and criticize Winn's travel record over the last 14 years in a 2 p.m. press conference at city hall in Kansas City, Kan.
This afternoon will be the same old show
Watkins, simply, has made Larry Winn the focus of his campaign.
In the last five weeks, Watkins has lambasted Winn at nearly every major campaign appearance, while keeping his own attributes in the background.
It's beginning to sound like a bad television commercial that appears again and again with the same message.
Watkins' campaign literature, posters, ads and an upcoming series of television community events.
No doubt an examination of the incumbent's record is necessary in any political campaign, but Watkins simply doesn't know when to shut up.
Voters are getting tired of his repeated attacks on Winn. Some criticism is in order, but week after week, at press conference after press conference, speech after speech . It gets old.
OK, so Watkins has shown that Winn is far from perfect. But what reason do voters have to believe that Watkins would be any different? He has spent so much time criticizing his opponent
The public now knows much about Larry Winn, but little about Dan Watkins.
Some of his attacks, furthermore, could backfire.
Winn's attendance record in Congress, for instance, has been one of Watkins' major criticisms. Watkins pointed out that Winn missed 32 percent of his committee meetings last year, but facted the fact that Winn was a delegate to the United Nations in New York for three months.
Winn, furthermore, has one of the best voting records in Congress (84 percent) during his 14 years as president.
Watkins' latest criticism, focusing on Winn's travel record, also brings up questions.
Watkins says that Winn has traveled more than 95 percent of all congressmen during the last two years. That argument, though, fails to take into account that Winn was a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as a delegate to the United Nations.
Watkins has been considered a top political strategist ever since he engineered Gov. John Carlin's upset win over incumbent Robert Bennett in 1978. He was Carlin's campaign manager. But this time around, Watkins seems to be attacking too hard.
He rebukes remarks that he is running a "negative campaign, saying, 'Why should we win against negatively on Larry Winn, reflect negatively on Larry Winn,' Don't get mad at me! get mad at Larry Winn.'
"I've had some people say to me, 'We don't want to hear what Larry Winn stands for, we want to hear what you stand for.' But we've told them that."
Still, there is little doubt that Watkins has driven away some voters with his hawkish strategy. No polls on the race have been released, and the players had an uphill battle in the beginning, facing a seven-term incumbent in the predominantly Republican Third District, which includes Lawrence.
Accordingly, his refusal to lift up on his result in the election will win is likely to result in a letdown on election day.
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is af-
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Reagan's 'friends' are good enemies
One of the bygone ideas presidential candidate Ronald Reagan has tried to revive the United States' loyalty to old foreign "friends."
Reagan insists that U.S. allies must not be abandoned when they need help—militarily or otherwise. He includes, Taiwan, Nicaragua and Brazil. The United States has deserted its interests.
Such an about-face, however, would clearly counter U.S. defense interests, as was realized earlier in the 1790s by defense and state department analysts. It is one of the lessons that was supposedly learned from Vietnam.
That lesson was that the United States had no business having troops in nations where its
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vital interests were not at stake. Reagan apparently would regard every foot of Taiwanese soil as a vital interest and would attempt to build a military curtain around the communists. On those grounds that U.S. military preparedness would never be because more conflicts would inevitably pop up with the U.S. Army at center stage.
Instead, the Carter administration has tried to define the U.S.' vital interests. The trouble has been that the policy has not been in effect long enough for most defense analysts to know where the "cross-the-line" head-off point is. Carter has stated that the Persian Gulf from which most of the U.S.' imported oil flows, is such a point.
What nearly everyone but Reagan an other leftovers from the McCarthy era have come to realize is that the United States cannot tell its "friends" to jump and to expect them to defend against everything from communists to cockroaches. This realization has not come about because of a loss of U.S. military strength; instead, it has come about from citizens of developing nations such as Nicaragua having the intelligence to select their own governments and deciding who they want to fight.
In the case of South Korea, which the United States has not totally "abandoned," Carter's cutback announcement earlier in his term achieved its intended effect. South Korea was correctly seen as outside of the United States,' vital interests and did not warrant the number of troops stationed in the nation. But the cutback in military strength also forced the Japanese, who sit about 100 miles across the straits from South Korea, to
beef up their defense spending. A complete withdrawal was seen as foolish because Japan is limited by its constitution to the construction of defensive weapons.
Intervention in the Nicaraguan Civil War was wisely rejected. As in the previous case of the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, U.S. military activity in the conflict would have been seen as further attempts at U.S. imperialism. If the United States had succeeded, its troops would have been the object of Iranian scorn.
The United States now has a chance to befriend a nation in an area, Central America, where it desperately needs friends. The Carter administration has discovered no inherent conflict between democracy and Marxism as in Nicaragua and Zimbabwe.
In one of Reagan's most carelessly considered proposals, Taiwan would or would not—depending on when Reagan was asked—enjoy a greater official relationship with the
United States Why this is needed is not clear because trade with Taiwan has continued uninterrupted despite the U.S.' new "friendship" with China.
Without formal ties with Taiwan, the United States can maintain its positive relationship while maintaining its own economic interests.
What Reagan and his advisors have failed to see is that "friendships" in the international community are formed and broken on a regular basis. Yesterday's enemy has not been the only group whose days are not made at gunpoint, especially when they also hold guns in their hands.
Iranians would be shaking hands with Americans under a threat of an M-16 if, as Reagan demanded, the United States had taken Iran to crumble. Stahf of Iran when his regime began to crumble.
If Reagan makes it to the White House, his advisers should update his telephone directory to include new U.S. friends and to delete former ones.
Letters to the Editor
To the editor:
Last month must be considered a watershed month for Kansan-Student Senate relations. Not unlike the repatriate between Carter, Reagan and Anderson in their race for the White House, these two organizations are involved in what appears to be a fight to the death.
Kansan, Student Senate both important
Never in my four years at KU have I witnessed such cross-fertigation of opinions between the student press and the student government. I must tell you I find it heartening, for the basis of the skirmish is an unspoken (and unwritten) realization of the importance of the other.
Locked in the threes of mortal combat, we read almost daily insightful, or witty or angry commentary by the editor, by a wide array of authors or by the Student Senate executives themselves.
At base are two organizations attempting legitimization through an undercutting of the other. And unfortunately, in so doing, they have to recognize the true value and intent of their adversary.
The Kansan indeed is justified in admonishing the Student Senate for its internal problems. anyone even remotely connected with the Saban, myself included, will readily admit them.
But for heaven's sake, don't persist in sensationalistic, James Klippatric-style of glib journalism. (I have it on good authority, Bill Menezes, that Matt Davis does not believe civilization as we know it" will crumble as a result of "Student Senate's dissolution.") Although I made the mistake, I do know that rhetorical writing, to paraphrase again, is known in common parlance as a good
On the other side of this metaphorical battle line, we find Student Senate, particularly those intimately involved with it, frustrated and annoyed by the Kansan. They realize, and hope we realize as well, that Senate does indeed serve a purpose and provide a service to the University. Admittedly, budget hearings, the transportation system, and all of Senate's business procedures do not appear very alluring or glamorous. They aren't. Yet despite difficulties in this "mundane bureaucracy," by and large it works. So sensitive is the problem. Senate to criticism—particularly 10,000 cases of criticism—in light of honest, forright actions toward self-improvement, that we overreach Matt Davis' editorial response of Sept. 22 attempts to make the Kanasan as illegitimate as the Kanans is painting his position to be. Despite the papal "at" the close of Davis' letter, I for one, as both a student senator and John Q. Student, am interested in listening to what the Kanasan's editorial staff has to say. I cannot dismiss your viewpoint out of hand, even though I, too, have
There are many times over the course of my involvement with Senate that an acidic pen a la Mencken, Twain or Shaw could have been used. But a 21-year-old Kansas columnist commenting on his peers does not a Mencken make. Yet Greg Schancke, student body president, berates you to studying Student Senate without offering "solutionary" advice from Student Senate." I sincerely question Schancke's mandate to the Kanas for "a put up or shut up" approach to editorial writing.
been misquoted by student journalists. Certainly the executive staff of the Kansan is in the most knowledgeable and, simultaneously, most powerful position to observe the Senate's trials and tribulations. And what a wealth of editorial material can be found.
In closing, ask the reader to consider my earlier point; namely, that I find this flurry of criticism encouraging. Anyone involved with either the Kansan or the Student Senate realizes the importance of the other and also sees their shortcomings. At the same time they realize they provide a service to the University community. (I wouldn't have sat through a week of budget hearings last spring if I hadn't thought it worthwhile. By the same token, I assume the Kansan's editorial staff does not write as though it was for the bathroom wall.)
This past month has brought issues into focus for many of us. My request is that the Kansa and the Senate realize the basis from which the other is motivated and works, and concurrently, aspire to improve their own organization. "In-house" fighting is both self-infulgent and self-destructive. Further, realize that the respect of our peers and mentors must be earned. The heavy price we pay for such respect, though, is maturity of thought and action.
David C. Henry
Overland Park senior
Jesus more than man
To the editor:
I am deeply compelled to respond to some comments made by kevin in Helikar in his Sept. 15 article.
Helliker states in the second paragraph that he believes "that Jesus of Nazareth was a highly intelligent, reflective and philosophical man." However, there are too many direct and indirect claims to Jesus' deity in the Bible to call him just a man.
C. S. Lewis, a former Cambridge University professor and once an agnostic, wrote, "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and
call him lord and God. But let us not come with an army patronizing nonsense about his being a king, but rather to dissuade him from it.
Next, Helliker says that the preacher "had nothing absolutely to say that appealed to the mind." True, Cindy did not give you any historical or scientific proof for Christianity (even though there is much), but that was not her purpose for being on campus.
What Cindy and Jed were doing was challenging you to look at your yourselves and to see what kind of relationship you really have with the Lord. The time is too short for you to have an on-again, off-again relationship with the Lord.
In the last paragraph of the letter, it was said,
"If you want to follow Jesus, then, start by
realizing that you are your own savier." To be very
blunt, that is a lie of the devil.
You must either serve the Lord or serve the world; you cannot have two masters. I would think that reflecting on your eternal relationship with God is very substantial food for thought.
What Jesus really said was, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through me." The only real way to find salvation is to admit your sinful nature and believe in God. We are for those sins. No deed of the mind can bring you blameless before the Lord.
In closing, I would like to challenge every reader to seriously consider with an open mind his or her relationship with Jesus Christ. May you all find the love and peace of the Lord!
David Hartzler
Lawrence resident
Apology extended
To the editor:
On behalf of the Humanities Lecture Committee, I would like to apologize to those who were unable to enter Spencer Museum last week to hear John Cage's lecture.
Traditionally, the Humanities Lectures are held in Woodruff Auditorium. Unfortunately, all our efforts to secure Woodruff for this event were unsuccessful.
The staff of Spencer Museum was gracious enough to allow us to use its facilities, and it made a valiant, although unsuccessful, effort to be the speakers for these unable to enter the auditorium.
KANU recorded the lecture and will broaden it in the near future. Hopeably, arrangements can be made to Cage back someday, and to provide him with a more spacious forum.
Robert Spires
Chairman, Humanities Lecture Committee
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