A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
1970
TALK TO US
MONDAY, DEC. 10, 2001
Kurston Phelps
editor
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editor@kunstan.com
Leita Schultes Christina Neff managing editors 864-4854 or editor@authors.com
Erin Adamson
Brendan Woodbury
opinion editors
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opiniondirect@kansan.com
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business manager
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Tom Eblen
general manager and
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CLAY MCCUISTION/KANSAN
LETTERSTO THE EDITOR
Dear editor.
Ms. Bainum is just like many toe-tag liberal professors on university campuses today. They blame America for Sept. 11 and gloat about their First Amendment rights but when others disapprove of their ideas and protest them, these same professors threaten to file lawsuits against others' freedom of expression.
I couldn't help but chuckle after I read Megan Bainum's sobsong and tirade against "the voices of sexual repression" and our "morally righteous world" ("Neither Mom nor society should stop her." Dec. 6.)
Now I will give Ms. Bainum credit.
You have not stooped to the level of your fellow anything-goes, post-modern, political correctness-advocating partners by threatening legal action but you have displayed an attitude that is common among your type. That is one of being able to give but not to take.
It is Ms. Bainum's First Amendment right to promote sexual perversion in the pages of the Kansan. But don't start wringing your hands and pouting when others publically criticize your perverse worldview. By the way, before writing another column encouraging fellow KU students to just do it if it feels good, I suggest that Ms. Bainum read verses nine through eleven of the sixth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. However, that is in the Bible, which may just be too "morally righteous" for you.
Mike Hoffman Chicago senior
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PERSPECTIVE
Hard copy:
Kansan newsroom
111 Staffer-Flint
Minnesota sad to see baseball go
Major League Baseball is pregnant.
Or at least you'd think it was listening to the news lately. Everywhere you turn, you hear about baseball having contractions. Unfortunately, this pregnancy won't result in a beautiful new creation, but rather the loss of two franchises. Although it hasn't been officially announced, it appears the two teams cut will be the Montreal Expos and the Minnesota Twins. This is a bad thing for baseball fans no matter where you're from, but being from the Land O'Lakes makes it even worse for me.
I admit that over the last ten years, the Twins were about as bad as any major sports franchise can be, but this last season things finally started to look a little brighter for the Twickin. And how were they rewarded? By being told they may get cut.
After winning the World Series in 1991, the Twins began a downward spiral that left them in last place year after year after year. I think there were more people in my psychology class last year than there were fans at the Twins games during those years. Going to a game, it looked as though the team was playing in the middle of the ocean, because of the blue seats.
Marc
Ingber
Columnist
opinionakansan.com
Commentary
Every year the team's payroll would go down, leaving them with the lowest payroll in the league for the 2001 season. So naturally, everyone expected them to be cellar dwellers once again. But this year was the year of 2001: A Twins Oddity — they actually were good. Usually the Twins win about as many games as there are letters in the name of Doug Mientkiewicz, the Twins' first baseman.
This season, however, the Twins were in first place for much of the first half of the season, and they ended up finishing in second place. Although they missed the playoffs, they did better than anyone thought they would, considering their payroll. That's why it's a real shame that the league is thinking of cutting them.
Going to Twins' games has long been
a summertime tradition for people in Minnesota. When thinking of summer, one doesn't usually get the image of watching a baseball game inside a giant dome, but that's the way it's been in Minnesota for my entire life. That's what I'll be able to tell my grandkids.
I'll tell them of the hot summer days where I would go into a giant white bubble to watch the Twins play. A time when you could buy a cup of Coke for only $6, and a box of cracker jacks for only $17.50. Ah, memories.
Although your team may be good now, there is nothing to say in the future it won't get cut (unless you are a Yankees fan). Although it won't likely happen next season, there is a good chance that soon the Twins will be no more. And judging by the way the Minnesota Vikings are playing, our only claim to fame will be a giant mall.
I know many of you aren't Twins fans, but this contraction may start a chain reaction that could lead to other teams getting cut in the future.
Ingber is a sophomore from Golden Valley, MN.
PERSPECTIVE
Why we need a tuition increase and who could have prevented it
David Kerr has left us with a crummy choice.
Kansas used to place a high value on education. It has always been a conservative state, but Kansans consistently supported funding for education.
Now we have, as Governor Bill Graves put it, "a growing group of legislators who are just not very supportive of public education." This group is led by David Kerr, a state senator from Hutchinson. First as Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and now as President of the Senate, Kerr has blocked repeated efforts by Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise spending on education or even to hold it steady in real terms.
Commentary
From 1996 to 2000 as the economy grew and tax revenues swelled, Kerr successfully pushed $800 million into tax cuts. In the meantime, higher education spending rose only 4 percent, failing to even keep pace with inflation. Spending on K-12 education was falling even further behind, and last year Gov. Graves tried to do something about it. He proposed to increase the K-12 budget to the level that it should have been at had it merely kept pace with inflation over the previous decade. Because of the slowing economy and the tax cuts, the proposal required a tax increase of $80 million. Kerr announced that the Senate would not support any tax increase, and the plan was dead before it started.
Brendan Woodbury
Associate
Opinion Editor
opinionkanans.com
shows no sign of budging on his refusal to raise taxes. So now at the University of Kansas, we are left with a crummy choice: raise tuition or cut programs.
The same scenario is now strangling higher education. The University only receives 80 percent as much per student from the state as its peer universities do, but the state is already facing a $130 million budget shortfall, and Kerr
It's not really a choice at all. The problems with raising tuition are many and varied. They are also trivial compared to not raising tuition. The University of Kansas must raise tuition. And it's David Kerr's fault.
Undemocratic: The University of Kansas is supposed to be a public university. Public universities are government programs, set up by state legislatures with state tax dollars for the benefit of the state. If the democratically elected State legislature decides to spend less money on any other program, that program shrinks; it doesn't raise funds elsewhere. The University does not get to choose when it will be a public university and when it will be a private one. A decision by appointed officials to raise tuition to replace lost government dollars is undemocratic.
To illustrate what a crummy choice this is, let's look at why raising tuition is bad from various perspectives:
**Elitist:** Raising tuition without equal increases in financial aid means that the state's flagship university becomes unaffordable to more of the state's poorest residents. In all likelihood, it
means that the student body will draw even more heavily from Douglas County and Johnson County.
Kansas was the last state in the country to grant automatic admission to all public universities to any resident with a high school diploma. It traditionally places a premium on giving state residents from every region and class the same educational opportunities. Pricing more students out of the school would mark a rapid transformation from populist to elitist.
Wastful: Any student who has lived in student housing or dealt with facilities and operations know additional beneficial spending cuts could be made at KU. Increasing revenues takes the pressure off the University to trim the fat.
Shortsighted: The Board of Regents has not taken steps to guarantee that all Kansans will still have the opportunity to go to college. Given the difference in average lifetime earnings between high school and college graduates, income tax revenues twenty years from now could take a big hit.
And Yet: There is no other choice. KU's peer universities are spending 25 percent more per year.The only alternative is to cut programs,find a new peer group and throw away a century's worth of work.
So students, support the administration on the tuition increase. Help others to pay if you can. And when you graduate, move to Hutchinson and vote against David Kerr.
Woodbury is a senior from Prairie Village in political science and organismal biology. He is associate opinion editor.
FREE for ALL 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Not all of them will be published. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
Don't you dare trash on Owen Wilson. He may not be the greatest actor, but he is much better than Gene Hackman.
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10
Jeff Boschee's Mount is making hoft
To the guy who called in about the cowbell you totally butchered that line, and I put it here a long time ago. Get some new material.
The new football coach's million dollar salary plus incentives? Hmm...can someone say tuition increase?
The sex coulism for the *UK* is awful, and I wish they'd get someone new.
Bang-a-rang, Rufio.
Listen, the solution to KU's financial problem is not a tuition increase, it's more cowbell.
Hi, we were just walking to psychology, and we were wondering what you have to say to get into the Free For All
This is for the girl who found her ID. You know where I work, so come and find me.
Message to KU Info: if girls want to pay us to be naked, give them our number.
I was thinking about people from Missouri and they're pretty cool, but that's only because a guy across the hall would beat me up if I said otherwise.
it's December, and it's hotter than a duck's feet on a tin roof.
Ay, yes, divorce. From the Latin meaning "to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."
I just woke up, and my clock says 1:50, but for some reason I think it says 4:20.
stay gold, and keep smiling, hot stuff. Only a couple more weeks, and we can tell the alarm clocks to go to hell.
My roommate has the cutest toes
Hi. Patsucks.
Hi. Pat sucks.
I am a heterosexual male who loves having sex with women, and I love the TLC show Trading Spaces. There, I admit it.
I just saw our new football coach he looks alot like Mike McShane from Whose Line is it Anyway?
it's 345, and my roommate will probably be getting up in about 3 hours.
I'm watching Mr. Rogers on TV and Mr.
Rogers just said "That's my kind of blowing
instrument." Is that sick or what?
I'm glad E's Express replaced their Digimon milk cartons with Power Rangers milk cartons.
I've got some mistletoe in my room and what good has it done me? None.
Forget trolleys, gnomes are where it is at
Especially gnomes that play the flute.
To the hot Spanish girl in my calculus class
Why'd you drop it? You gave me a reason
for going.
I got a strawberry condom! Whoo!
I don't need sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead.
I'm mad at my husband, so I'm going to order a pair of Prada sandals and not tell him.
Hey, it's me.
Is it wrong to pee in the dorm shower?
Why cry over a nib? It's just a nib.
If I was a magnet, I would want to be on a refrigerator.
I just saw some guy put the classified section of the Kansas City Star down his pants.
today! skipped class to build a ginger-bread house.
Popcorn and nail polish do not go together.
College has rally made me set realistic
goals. I want to be Karen from Wii & Graze
Blah, blah, Blee, Blee, I bet this gets printed.
I may need money for the tuition increase next year. If you want to have sex, I'm accepting donations.
It's days like today that I'm glad I didn't vote for Al Gore, that I'm cold warming rocks.
Did I catch a niner in there? Were you calling from a walkie-talkie?