Opinion
Page 2 University Daily Kansan, September 27, 1980
KU grins and beers it
A plan is being drafted to sell beer during University of Kansas football games. If approved, the plan could tap the keg to some much needed revenue for KU's intercollegiate sports.
Actually, beer has been consumed throughout the years at Memorial Stadium despite the University's ban on beer at football games. Fans traditionally sneak their afternoon brews through the stadium gates, and there's been virtually nothing the University can do about it.
The University will only gain from selling beer, especially given the sad state of the athletic budget. The availability of beer also probably would curb the amount of hard liquor constantly finding its way into the stadium.
A study on beer sales at the University of Colorado at Boulder showed that incidents involving drunkenness were fewer after the University started selling beer in the stadium. With that in mind, instituting beer sales would have few, if any, feasibility problems.
The Kansas Union already sells beer, and no Kansas Board of Regents policy prohibits the University from selling beer on campus grounds. KU athletic officials have indicated their interest in the plan, and Acting Chancellor Del Shankel intends to discuss the matter soon.
At Colorado, beer costs $1 a shot. While beer sales couldn't save KU's athletic budget, they certainly wouldn't worsen its aliments. Even the University could drink to that.
KU honors program breeds boredom. not academic pride
For several years I have thought that it was not much of an honor to be in the KU Honors Program. I didn't always think this way, and as I look back now, I realize that my first disappointment with the honors program was making a mistake of believing what I read about the program.
I really believed that the honors program would live up to its promise and provide classes
that would challenge and develop my abilities,
and that being in class with other honors
students would provide mutual intellectual
benefits.
Because I believed the honors program's promises, I entered the Summer Honors Institute two weeks after graduating from high school. The institute supposedly was designed to allow students to apply for an opportunity to begin their college work early in the enriched atmosphere of honors work.
After several weeks in the institute, I began to realize that I was not receiving the benefits promised. My alleged reward for pursuing honors studies would be an enhanced intellectual capacity and competence, as well as academic abilities. But in truth, the only lesson I learned that summer was perseverance.
I suffered through an English course taught by a professor who became outraged at the honors students only because they could not write as well as college upperclassmen. I also survived a science class taught by a professor who could not present a well-organized, coherent lecture. Although he knew his field well, he could not effectively communicate the subject matter.
Finally, there was a more nebulous class dealing with the philosophical aspects of what makes a good education. Plato's Republic and Stuart John Mill's autobiography were the texts that we were supposed to read and draw ideas from. But the class actually became a sort of indoctrination of the professor's ideas about elitist education.
The professor tried to impress upon us that honors students were above the average college student and that they were an intellectual elite within the University. We should recognize our place and try to associate only with other honors students, he told us, and eventually we would
become the intellectual leaders of the University community while gaining a top notch education.
At the end of the summer I was confused. I did not have a broad enough perspective to realize that my bad experience was the fault of the institute and the honors program and not me. I been beater, indoctrinated and bored instead of enlightened and intellectually broadened.
But I did not give up on the honors program entirely, even though I had plenty of reasons to do so. I learned that with careful choosing it is possible to take some outstanding courses taught by competent professors. But the positive experience is not the only reason not come close to outweighing the negative aspects, and I believe the program is in need of great change and revamping.
David M. Katzman, professor of history, is the new honors program director this year, and I am pleased to hear about his work.
The biggest problem with the program is that there are too many mediocre or incompetent professors teaching honors courses. The honors program does not have any means of evaluating the courses that are offered, and because of this, professors who cannot effectively teach honors courses keep teaching them semester after semester.
Also, the honors program is less a program that is an assortment on classes that can be taken. Individual departments offer whatever honors courses they want and students pick from them. After 24 hours of these courses a student is required to take one of the tutorial, a one-hour seminar, can be a good introduction to the program, but there needs to be a more defined progression of classes that challenge, stimulate and educate students on a variety of subjects. There also needs to be a class that attempts to pull together an honors course in intellectual experiences at the end of the program.
Finally, the honors program needs to disassociate itself with the idea that it is here to build an elite intellectual circle at the University. There is no doubt that honors students can benefit from interaction with each other, but this does not mean they cannot also benefit other students and other University experiences.
Katzman has a difficult job ahead of him if he hopes to transform the honors program into something more viable and worthwhile. The task cannot be done in six months or even one year, but it is worth the time because the honors program and its classes provide more intellectual disappointment than academic stimulation.
Letters Policy
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 after publication, they should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
Joe Bantos '80 KANSAN
Our student body president and vice president take a short trip.
Efforts too late to save Student Senate
Proving once again that nothing from nothing leaves nothing, the KU Student Senate took a momentous step last week by halving the number of votes it will contain after the next Senate election.
After you've stopped yawning, stop to consider the importance of this step, or rather the lack thereof.
The plan, which apportions Nunemaker as one school instead of several districts, was introduced by Student Body Vice President Matt Davis in an attempt to solve the Senate's problem of luring quorum to Senate meetings. A hearing on the proposed measure appeared. A bare quorum of 58 showed up last Wednesday to approve the measure that will doom some of their compatriots' seats.
Big deal, right? That evidently is the attitude of the student body when it comes to Senate matters. And it is clearly the attitude of the Senate concerning Senate matters. A look at some of the Senate's antics of the past week bears this out.
The petition to shrink the Senate was debated Sept. 9, but no decision could be made because the Senate underwent another of its many "trial" shinkregions that night and could not raise a quorum. The next day, Davis, suitably, and not surprisingly, perturbed at the turn of events, and it turned out thaturntimingly, angry letter to senators that bared them for the show of anopathy.
The letter is really something. First, Davis voiced his understanding for the lack of respect that senators may have for him and Student Dr. Reed's character in a case of respect that drives some senators apathetic.
The letter then resorted to groveling, invoking the influence of the Almighty and a good deal of
exaggeration to try to induce senators to attend Senate meetings.
No dice, however, and looking at the reasons Davie gave for having "some respect for the idea of student governance," as he put it, it is not hard to understand why the letter use ineffective
Davis' claimed that the dissolution of the Senate and its operations would take with it "the
BILL
MENEZES
bus system, the student health policy, the activity fee, Legal Services, the state student lobby and dozens of other programs." Not to mention civilization as we know it. But in truth, these programs are not so intensely complicated that only the Student Senate can operate them.
The Senate can barely operate itself. The notion that these programs could not be operated by any organization other than Student Senate, or the institution's main suitable student representation, is ludicrous.
Equally laughable is Davis' contention in the letter that the Senate's dissolution would mean a "university at which students have no input into academic policies, into freedom of speech debates, into the selection of faculty and administrators and thereby into the most basic decision-making processes that take place on this campus."
Assuming there was massive student participation in these arenas now, and that would be quite an assumption, Davis would have senators believe that students could not independently
Student representation in faculty and administration selection, for example, probably would be better if the students were not drawn from a small, relatively homogeneous group like the one comprising Senate. It would not be difficult to enact procedures whereby students would participate in committee meetings or mittees when they were available. The system would be much more representative.
perform the same functions without a student
who knows what is known in common
pardance as a crook.
If apathy prevailed as it does now, then the students again would have shown that they did not want to have a hand in the process anyhow. The students had been given more of an opportunity to participate.
But all this supposition is wasted time, just like the efforts of Davis and others to legitimize the Senate. But it is nice to know that at least somebody cares enough to do what he thinks needs to be done in order to save what he feels is a necessary part of this university, it is obvious that the efforts border on the quixotic. Apathy has been the strongest force in the Senate for years. Unfortunately, despite his admirable efforts to change this, Davis remains blind to the fact that only a miracle of DeMille proportions could change it.
At the Sept. 9 meeting that failed to pass the Senate shrinkage petition, Davis said that if Senate did not improve its efficiency, "no one will be able to graduate." Student Senate will begin losing its legitimacy.
To say Senate "will begin" losing credibility is like saying that Nixon "began" losing credibility when he resigned from office. To worry about her losing credibility, Happie Hooker worrying about her virginity
In both cases, it's just a bit too late.
Letters to the Editor
Kansan breeds mud slingers, smart alecks
"There has come into the department of some immature or ambitious journalists an overbearing elitism that sets the public's teeth on edge . . . Rude demanor on the part of a smart-earlier reporter courts cheap peer approval at the cost of public patience. What a dumb way for the press to act." (Eugene Patterson, Quill, April 1980).
To the editor:
Your own particular brand of elitist, smart-aleck journalism has passed from the annoying to the insulting and finally to the preposterous stage.
Enclosed is a quote that I would like to share—one I hope you will all read carefully. The comments are quite an accurate description of Kansan behavior:
Scarcely a day goes by that you don't sing mud at some branch of the University, be it the Honors Program, the Student Senate, the Chancellor. You lull everyone and everything with equal ease, rushing your dirt to the press as soon as possible. You're as the facts or accurate quotation—things that no doubt are considered to be of peripheral importance to your staff.
Yet there is one exclusion that is even more conspicuous and more annoying than these others, and that is your total inability to propose solutions to the problems you bring up. We all know how easy it is to cut a program down, but the trick is to build it up and solve the problem.
Without that answer, that solution, your editorials have no legitimacy; they merely serve to set the public's teeth on edge," and the editors earn the labels of "overbearing" and "elitist."
I will grant you, there are a lot of problems on this campus waiting to be joined by a lot of curses. But unless you are willing to crawl out of your ivory tower and face these problems with the rest of the 'mortal' population, don't bother to visit the campus; no interest in listening to what you have to say.
Matt Davis Student body vice president
Student Senate
To the editor:
Come on! Give us a break. I ever hear from the Kansan is criticism. Rarely is there an article or editorial offering solutions to the problem of child welfare. I'll never will ever get better if the Kansan keeps giving Senate a bad name. Why don't you try helping Senate by encouraging it instead of killing it? There is little alternative to Senate, unless you would prefer to eliminate all forms of student violence.
I ran for office to try to implement internal
changes in the Senate, making the organization more efficient and responsive to student issues. We are not finished yet. At least we are trying different proposals to see whether they work. What has the Kansan done? Criticize, mostly. If you, the editors, have solutions to the problems of the Student Senate or to how we can make the student population less apathetic, then why don't you write about them? I am tired of hearing what a lousy job we are doing and that nothing we attempt is working when you offer no yourselves.
Greg Schnacke Student body president
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