THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014
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opinion
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I don't care how much you hate the Gen. Ed. you're in, you DO NOT tell your teacher that the class is useless! Seriously just suck it up and complete the credits.
SoRude.
Bigg's bbq is on mass now! Is this real life?
If I were at Hogwarts I'd make better grades, go to class and participate, and probably be more social.
People crushing over Dr.Reed and I'm over here crushing over the TA Bryan. (Heart eyes emoji)
Can I get a round of applause for gay rights?
To "Color doesn't make you a diverse campus" guy: retweet
I've had more teachers from Canada during my time at KU than I've ever had in my life. I love it
October means Halloweentown on Disney, which means happy me!
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the word Vegas this week...
I still wouldn't buy a ticket to go.
tocooiltobecool
Applying for grad schools feels like senior year of high school again, except better!
Avoiding the freshman 15 is easy... stop taking the bus. Looking at you Daisy Hill and Naismith Hall
Don't look up "lotus seed head" if you are afraid of holes...
"Could Jennifer Aniston be more sexy?" -says Matthew Perry #friendsjoke
Why are people so shocked to see the basketball players like they live on Mars and come to Allen Fieldhouse for basketball games
Where are these Pepsi machines you speak of? And do they have Dr. Pepper?
Everyone complains about Fraser's elevators, which are horrifically slow, but no one talks about Wescoe's terrible ones.
Phoebe? Thats very original. I'd marry the shit out of Daenerys Targaryen... Just call me the Father of Dragons
If you don't use Google Drive for everything, you're not doing college right.
I express my deepest gratitude to the one who quoted RvB
Hong Kong protests should elicit more than solidarity
Thousands of Chinese students are protesting
against Beijing's policies regarding Hong Kong's supposed political autonomy. When Hong Kong was handed over to China from the United Kingdom in 1997, stipulations of the handover required that Hong Kong be allowed to democratically elect their chief executive politician beginning in 2017, according to BBC News. China, however, recently announced it would allow Hong Kong to vote only from a selection of pre-approved candidates — a move that ignited the protests.
The protesters' efforts have been successful in drawing international attention to the situation, but it isn't clear how effective the protests will
oe in changing Beijing's notoriously stubborn political agenda. Beijing finds itself in an awkward position - wanting badly to suppress the protests, while having to restrain itself from getting physically involved in Hong Kong territory. International commentary has condemned China's authoritarian-style approach in seeking to maintain control over Hong Kong, clearly disregarding the 1997 agreement. Beijing, however, has been playing down the international response, claiming the matter as an "internal" conflict it hopes to quickly resolve (in its favor, of course).
As peers of those protesters, how should we react to the daily doses of news from Hong Kong?
As citizens of a (mostly) free and (mostly) democratically operated country, we should first of all feel solidarity with democracy-minded Hong Kong citizens. They are fighting for a freedom that we have the privilege of regarding as self-evident. Imagine what it would be like to live under the control of communist China; then, think about how many people of the world live under similar rule. If you do take democracy to be a self-evident societal freedom, then it's important to recognize
that we shouldn't take our political freedom for granted as easily as we do most of the time.
You might realize many of the issues we get caught up in are pretty silly in comparison to what goes on in the rest of the world. While citizens in Hong Kong protest against authoritarian rule, our University finds it important to sack its football coach due to our poorly performing football team. Even worse, our democratic political system finds itself plagued by situations that insult the value of having a free political system in the first place. For example, Kansas' gubernatorial candidates are currently engaged in petty competition with one another, attempting
to create negative images of the other and often using politically irrelevant examples in order to obtain office. This is insulting to our system because it makes it seem acceptable to treat freedom like a child, often employing dishonesty and psychological manipulation in order to obtain control of it.
Here, and in the rest of the country, these situations are common because we take our political freedom for granted. The current situation in Hong Kong should teach us to find more respect for the democratic system we have grown up in.
Sebastian Schoneich is a senior from Lawrence studying biochemistry and philosophy
Censorship does not help us move forward,but backwards
This summer, I read "Lolita" by Vladimir
Nabokov. While purchasing it, I noticed the man at the register giving me some side-eye as he rang up my book. His look seemed to say, "Should you be reading this? Do you know what this is about?"
I wasn't oblivious to the novel's content,
and I was aware of the stigma attached to the story. "Lolita" had been banned across the globe for obscenity, and that was partially the reason I chose to read it. I consider "Lolita" one of the most compelling novels I've ever read.
During September's Banned Books Week. I was thinking about "Lolita" and how I would not have been able to experience it had I lived in the Middle East or another part of the world that practices censorship. I thought of how unfair it is to deprive thousands of
people of a book simply because it deals with the unsavory aspects of our lives. But to me, reading is the key to empathy; by taking people's books away, you take their tolerance as well.
Right on the heels of Banned Books Week, the Denver school board announced its proposal to censor AP history classes. Understandably, this caused an outrage among students and teachers, leading to daylong protests.
Originally, the school board looked to remove all events that "encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law," according to CBS News. Now, it has changed the original wording of its proposal, but still passed a proposal that requires curriculum to be reviewed by a committee. If curriculum is changed too much, the College Board will strip classes of their AP rankings.
The time the Denver school board spent in history class must be far behind them because civil disorder, social strife and disregard of the law are the building blocks of American history.
In fact, our country's independence stems from an act of civil disorder and disregard of the law, known as the Revolutionary War. Are we going to stop teaching our students about unlawful events like the Boston Tea Party? Are we going to push the entire civil rights and women's suffrage movements out of the way in favor of something more plush and less strife-riidden? This is crucial.
This proposal reveals a gaping hole in our
society. Banning a book or censoring history classes are fruitless methods of cutting out the less desirable aspects of human nature. Banning "Lolita" won't protect society from pedophilia, just like cutting the Trail of Tears from high school curriculum won't change history.
Censorship is a type of wishful thinking that is dangerous to society. When an authority bans public access to certain themes or content, it sentences them to a lifetime of incompetence.
When school officials pull "The Hunger Games" from shelves due to excessive violence, they're missing the overall point of the book and, ironically, depriving students of the message that we should always be cautious when power is given to the wrong people.
At the same time, when a school prevents
students from studying the Holocaust because of its concern for students' welfare, it isn't helping students. When students see unsavory pictures and read horrifying statistics, it drives the point that some things in our past were wrong, and measures need to be taken to ensure they don't happen again.
Though censorship is an attempt at purifying our society, all it does is taint it. Censoring books or history because they portray us in a negative light is an insult to readers and students who deserve to have unhindered access to content that will make them more aware and, ultimately, more valuable citizens.
Maddy Mikinski is a sophomore from Linwood studying journalism
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