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University Daily Kansan, September 18, 1980
Opinion
Better teachers on way
Officials at KU's School of Education deserve good marks for changing the school's requirements. It doesn't take an educated guess to say that the move will be a beneficial one.
Officials at the school have decided to expand the school's undergraduate teaching program from four to five years. Only several schools around the country have taken such a step, which proves the school this time has been the forerunner instead of the chaser.
Beginning next fall, education majors will need about 30 additional hours to graduate. The extra credit will not be wasted. In that time, students will gain more practical experience in the classroom, where they belong.
students will be exposed early to their
professions, whereas most students now don't venture into an unfamiliar classroom until their last year in school.
Upon graduating, students under the program also will be qualified to teach at two of the three educational levels—grade, middle and high school. Students now are certified at only one level.
Besides, our future teachers need better educations and stronger backgrounds. Our future students deserve that.
To be sure, the new program will make it more difficult to obtain a teaching degree. Students will have to make a stronger commitment to teaching. But education, at least a sound education, requires such a commitment.
The new program will be tougher, but its results will be better instructors. And right now, they are in short supply.
Mud wrestling frolics drag women's pride into the mud
There it was, in all its grimy翻, spattered across page one of the University Daily Kansan. Surely it was the muck of a slow news day; it simply had to be.
Slow news days aside, women's mud wrestling, "the latest craze from the West Coast," has sloshed its filthy way to the heartland.
According to Monday's Kansan story, 5,000 gawker们 groveled into Benjamin Stables, a bachelor's dormitory.
AMY HOLLOWELL
and chills of mud wrestling. They paid $6 each night for a woman's women roll around together in a muddied room.
Surely we have gone mad. Surely Chris Fritz, Kansas City promoter of music and other events, has succumbed to the absurd. We are playing with such turpitude be playning with a full deck.
But this most recent degradation of women is less a reflection of the promoter than of the vile dust where he sprung. "It is indeed the loudness of the foumness of current American culture."
It's not enough that America parades its women in bathing suits and wet T-shirts, that it exploits them in magazines and porno flicks, that it wishes to condition them to be submissive, secondary playthings. Now America has them pigging around half-naked in a murky pit, to the glee of the drooling, belching crowd.
But what of the wrestling women themselves? Why have they given in to such
hummilizing decadence? Could it be, perhaps,
the money? No, mud wrestling surely could
not be a lucrative occupation. Perhaps it is
glory and fame they seek. But what possible
glory and fame could be derived from lolling
like pigs in a sty?
Perhaps it has nothing at all to do with mud or with wrestling. Could it be that these women simply want attention, that they simply want to be recognized after all these years of never having been recognized? They have *le* zed stifled lives, subject to a chauvinist society that likes to watch them grove in the mud and wants them barefoot in the kitchen.
These wrestlers apparently do not realize that their feats in the filth are perpetuating the degradation of women. They must not realize that the jeers and chortles from these vulgar "fans" are not recognition, but are, instead, humiliation.
What about these masses payed to witness such vulgarity? Are they sick? Do they really enjoy these follies? They, too, are products of this misguided America, a Machiavellian whisperer who "soma" justifies the means. In other words, anything goes, as long as you get off on it.
We are a people so advanced that we have reverted to the barbarism of pleasure as a raison d'etre. We have vainly given ourselves a mandate to banish compassion and civility from our "civilization," and even from our "games." It is as if we would be willing to forsake all deciency for the base satisfaction of witnessing this ultimate in absurd sports.
So now we are plagued by this new spectacle. Americans are driven so blindly by pleasure-seeking that they will pay to watch women wrestle in mud. This is perverse; this is not a good idea, but it is humiliating degradation. This is fliity, baric and, apparently, bottomless muck.
Too bad, isn't it, that Monday wasn't just a slow news dav?
Letters Policy
Letters must be signed and must include the writer's address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position.
Pet projects stonewall KU progress
Something there is that doesn't love a wall. That sends the frozen ground-sweal under it. And spills the upper boulders in the sun. And makes out the two trees to touch them.
And makes gaps that even two can pass a breast.
—from "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost
Frost knew about walls that the ancient Chinese, the East Germans and the University of Kansas dunked. The Germans built a wall of wood in an enclosure. The Chinese feared vicious Mongol hordes. KU happens to like wally walls.
At least that's the explanation given by Keith Lawton, director of the office of facility planning. Lawton said the wall now under construction at 15th and Iowa was part of a project to improve the parking administration "enhance" that corner, used increasingly as a major access to the University.
The wall, and landscaping in front of it, will complement a recently completed information center. Together, Lawton said, they will present a more favorable image to prospective students and off-campus visitors than did the empty lawn, single sign and dorm backdrop there. The area also will serve as a place for visitors to get their bearings.
But with a tag of about $30,000 for the equipment engaged in a classic case of overload - and PHM-ware.
For $30,000, the University could have commissioned art for the bare corner, instead of shelling out big bucks for a pile of rocks. Better yet, it could be built as thick as much and planted some trees and flowers.
As walls go, KU's newest addition is a nice one. Double-thick slabs have been laid in repeating patterns, and it looks sturdy enough. But it doesn't wall anything in or keep anything out.
The information center, labeled clearly in that unmistakable KU royal blue, also is a bit eloquent. "King Kong," it's written.
SCOTT FAUST
the display case aren't in themselves too much, but they're installed in a monstrous stone arch with a bench in the middle. Why not a simple phone app--display case and free-standing phone booth?
KU, as has been noted ad infinitum, has a beautiful campus. To be sure, much money and work have gone into the improvement of Mt. Oread's appearance since roaring cattle shared the campus. First impressions are important, but a person's opinion of the University hardly hinges on whether a street corner looks like Versailles.
The money for the 15th and 18th improvements came from an individual bequest to the Society of Friends, the last of whom was born in
provement and upkeep of the residence hall system and the area surrounding the halls. The money could not have been used for valuable scholarships, long-needed equipment or research.
Even so, people with Daisy Hill addresses each could have suggested ways to spend the money for the benefit of hall residents. Instead, the money was spent so Nebraska football fans can remark to one another what a "pretty entrance" KU has made of 15th and Iowa.
The construction of a $30,000 wall is not really surprising at a school where officials refuse to accept the fact that grass simply goes dormant and turns brown when it gets hot.
It appears that maintaining the vine perfection of the KU campus for returning alumni and visiting state legislators sometimes has taken a toll on education, bringing the highest quality education for students.
Former Chancellor Archie Dykes' concern for appearances is legendary, and maybe it paid off for him in his ability to solicit state and private funds for the University. The neatly manicured sidewalks and neat lettering on all KU signs are testimonies to his priorities.
Perhaps, then the wall could be put to good use before it bows to the elements. A plaque bearing Deyke name installed on the wall, along with other memorials to appear there, would be a fitting memorial.
Then the University wouldn't even have to name a building for him.
Letters to the Editor
Reagan column a product of media biases
To the editor:
Allow me to congratulate the author of that brilliantly conceived editorial, "Reagan act flips without cue cards," which appeared Sept. 12. Because the words of that editorial surround on all sides a rectangular space containing both the name and picture of a certain Scott Faust, I assume that he is the one who takes full credit for that inspired heap of verbal refuse.
He shouldn't.
A large share of that credit, anyway, should by all rights go to the national news media. This is not because they have supplied all the facts upon which Faust, like us all, has formed his views, but instead because they consistently have presented those facts in a tone and format implicitly biased against Reagan, and thereby gradually have prepared us to swallow the otherwise unpalatable garbage that Faust offers as a now irresistibly delicious gourmet entree.
This entree represents a potent and refined distillation of every innuendo, distorted fact, strained tone of voice, overplayed headline or any other juicy scrap concerning Reagan that addresses the problem in and day out over the past campaign months, in addition to the whole of Reagan's political career.
Those who have allowed themselves to be brainwashed by these almost subliminal means will jump to have their appetites sated by what now becomes a mouthwatering delicacy. Again, my congratulations, Faust, for providing that all of us are aware of the editorial to distill the essence of all the media biases against Reagan subsult present throughout months and years of media coverage.
I only hope that we can snap out of this journalistically induced traction, to which Faust hasunknownly become an accomplice. The ex-communist may be unpleasant, but regurgitationalways is.
The alternative? Four more years of having to swallow Carter, and that would be poison.
Eric Brende
Toneka sonhor
Erie Brede
Topeka sophomore
Gay legal services
To the editor:
I would like to correct an error made in a letter
to the editor by Kathleen M. Conkey. She stated that "the house (of Representatives of the United States Congress) has decided that gays should not receive the benefits of those (their)
This is a misconception. If the section of the bill in question, which was included in the letter, is examined, you will notice that her conclusion has no basis.
The section reads: "That no part of this appl-
lication requires the Corporation to provide legal assistance in
promoting, defending or protecting homosexuality."
Conkey incorrectly states that the doors of the Douglas County Legal Aid society are closed to gays. This is not true. The bill closes the door to cases representing a conflict resulting from prejudice against people with privilege of legal aid to these people. They have as much right as straight people to use these services. They are not being discriminated against. Daniel Vincent Grelinger
Kansas City, Kan., freshman
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