4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
TUESDAY, DEC.4, 2001
TALK TO US
Kursten Phelps
editor
864-4854 or
editor@kansan.com
Leita Schultes
Christina Neff
managing editors
864-4854 or
editor@kansan.com
Erin Adamson Brendan Woodbury opinion editors 864-4810 or opinion@kansan.com
Jenny Moore business manager 864-4014 or adddirector@kansan.com
Kate Mariani retail sales manager 864-4462 or retailsales@kansan.com
Tom Eblen general manager and news adviser 864-7667 or teblen@kansan.com
Matt Fisher sales and marketing adviser 864-7666 or mfisher@kansan.com
EDITORIAL Ask about fine print with cable from Sunflower
Sunflower Broadband has a virtual monopoly of the televisions in Lawrence. If someone wants cable, the only choice is to order through Sunflower. Given this fact, the tactics the company employs to lure potential customers in are quite bewildering.
tollers in the area. First, the cable channels of Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of Kansas are 65 and 66. The only way anyone can get those channels is to pay for the expanded basic cable service.
PERSPECTIVE
pay for the college Students at the University must pay $31.95 a month just to watch their own student-run station. Sunflower could place those channels in its limited basic cable category, $19.95 per month, which would allow for more student viewership.
ship. Dana Gore, Sunflower's marketing director, explained that space limitations for multiple city programming didn't allow for those channels to fit into limited basic and that that 95 percent of customers already purchase expanded basic cable anyway.
The pricing of the plans is another confusing aspect of the cable service. Though $31.95 is listed on one of the brochures for expanded basic cable, the customer is actually being charged $35.31.The extra $3.36 is for state taxes federal taxes, FCC fees, and franchise fees.
Customers can assume there will be taxes added onto their service. But nowhere in the information Sunflower provides is it explained that there will be a 13 percent increase and that because there are no contracts to sign, a customer may not know until the first bill. Gore has said this will be corrected in a new brochure in the spring. In the meantime, customers are in the dark unless a customer service representative informs them.
The most misleading issue with Sunflower's brochures is that one of the pamphlets shows that limited basic cable includes channels 2 to 36. Limited basic cable only includes channels 2 to 28. Channels 2 to 36 cost extra. People may order Sunflower's cable packages thinking they will receive channels they will not.
These inaccurate brochures have been in circulation for months now. Customers may have purchased limited basic with the assumption that stations like HBO, Showtime, or Cinemax were included. Gore explained this card was "not a representation of what (the customers) are buying, but just a lineup of where the channels are located." Nevertheless, this card clearly lists those channels and more as part of the limited basic cable package.
This situation needs to be corrected before unwary customers purchase a package expecting more than they're getting. More importantly, it needs to be addressed before claims of false advertising starts hitting Sunflower's doorstep.
Dan Osman for the editorial board
Not quite the sexiest show on earth
The so-called "sexiest night on television" was nothing but sexist and degrading for women. The supermodels of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show paraded down the runway in push-up bras, Gstrings and spiked heels for a prime-time network audience. The images of women everywhere were damaged as a result, yet few people even noticed.
result, yet people keep.
While ABC once struggled with the controversy of showing a naked male behind on NYPD Blue, it didn't even hesitate to flaunt practically nude women down a runway in the name of advertising. The media's portrayal of women as sexual objects is nothing new, but it's always disturbing when these images are so widely accepted and applauded by mass audiences.
and applauded by mass audiences. The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was a patriarchal fantasy, packaged for network TV. Fully-clothed audiences were given the privileged gaze of viewing beautiful women in their underwear, dressed as "angels" or as Christmas presents waiting to be unwrapped. So-called "in-depth" interviews with the models attempted to humanize the sexualized bodies, but their shallow presentation only served to further teach the lesson that these women were little more than animated dolls.
Commentary
Frances
Gorman
Guest columnist
opinionakansan.com
I find nothing wrong with Victoria's Secret itself. The catalog is sitting somewhere on my coffee table right now. What I do find wrong is that the pages of a lingerie-shopping tool were brought to life during prime time network TV.
watch this thong fashion show. Few people complained of the sexual objectification of women and even fewer questioned the ethics of watching an hour-long commercial. No one wondered why network television would air a lingerie show in the first place, especially when it has never aired any other type of fashion show in the past.
This program was so successful because sex sells: It sells ratings, it sells lingerie and it also sells the oppression of women.
Twelve million people tuned in to
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show taught audiences that women are to be viewed and valued as sexual objects alone. This is an image that is rarely, if ever, attached to men, especially not to Drew Carey, the man whose sitcom would have normally aired that night on ABC.
Gorman is a Shawnee graduate student in journalism
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.
图
KU needs to hire Dennis Francione. If any one can get us to a bowl, he can.
图
monthly fee for entering buildings for classes.
Two wrongs don't make a right — three lefts do.
I think boys do strange things with mittens.
I'd just like to give a big congratulations to my roommate. He's finally a man.
Hi, I'm a frat boy, and I don't own flip flops or a visor.
□
I just read that some people get prescribed pot for depression. I could be depressed and not even know it. Wow.
图
I told this guy I would go on a date with him if he didn't smoke or drink for two weeks.
Please, if you see a skinny bald guy on campus, offer him some weed.
Hey man, instead of being called Free for All,
it should be called Reefer All. Yeah, put that
in your pipe and smoke it.
There's nothing like the look on a little kid's face when on Halloween he bites into a caramel-covered onion.
--monthly fee for entering buildings for classes.
What's up with vans without windows?
I hate finals. Please, somebody, make them go away.
To the person who said screw the U2 concert. Ten years from now, no one will remember who Linkin Park was.
I'm a junior and just learned how to use tampons, and I just wanted to say that they are a gift from God.
图
--monthly fee for entering buildings for classes.
Word to your mother.
It's Friday, and we're going to the Wheel. Donkey Punch is on me.
You make me feel sexy. You know who you are.
图
Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?
But of course.
KU2030
Is bowling really a sport?
Did you know that Heinz Mustard was developed in 1869? Hee hee...69!
More fees put Kansas among elite
By Michael Johnson Guest columnist
The chancellor announced today the attainment of a goal set by former Chancellor Robert Hemenway of making the University of Kansas one of the "top 25 public universities in the U.S." As of today, almost all financial support (90.7 percent) for this so-called "public" educational institution is now financed through user fees and tuition. This goal has been accomplished over the years by the establishment of many separate charges, including:
The institution of the new building entrance fees — $10 per month per building, students now pay a
Smart card reading turnstiles have been placed at all building entrances so students can be assessed a separate fee (25 cents per day) for entering buildings in which they do not attend classes, and therefore, have not already paid the semester fee. These additional fees must be paid before the student receives a grade or diploma at the end of each semester.
diploma at the end of each semester Although there has been some student resistance to this new fee, it was seen by many as the natural outcome of a state policy that requires students to pay for improvements and maintenance to various "public" buildings
on the KU campus. These charges have been instituted as far back as the 1970s, when students were required to partially pay for the building of Wescoe Hall and in the 1990s, the new recreation center. Buildings are now identified by numbers such as "0510" (Classes of '05-'10) designating the years students were required to pay that particular construction fee.
only free restroom on campus. The present administration is quite proud that the percentage of tenured professorships has now dropped to just 10 percent of total staff, and the percentage of part-time faculty (assistant and associate professors) has risen to 90 percent, which is in keeping with goals set by the Hemenway administration in the early part of the decade. Those goals included decreasing dependence on intellectuals and experts in the education of students, and to run the university "more like a business."
The creation of pay turnstiles at the entrance to all restroom facilities on campus has allowed the University to adequately pay its classified staff next year, something the Republican-controlled legislature had refused to do for more than 30 years.
MONDAY, DEC. 9, 2030
This has resulted in a major savings
It has been rumored, but not yet proven, that the Chancellor has the only free restroom on campus.
Ranking: Money boosts reputation
+
in faculty salaries, and "greater efficiency." According to an administration representative, this move has been fully justified by the 10 percent of tenured faculty who still manage to bring in enough research dollars to make the University a "top research institution."
Many graduate programs have been cut back or ended as the KU administration has decided it would not pay graduate teaching assistants wages commensurate to those of its former peer institutions. In 2010 it was unilaterally decided to pay GTAs in basketball tickets and brightly colored autumn leaves, because "these are highly valued items that make KU a great place to go to school." As many graduate programs at KU could not
recruit actively because of lack or funding, numbers of new graduates dropped dramatically, and students seeking master's and doctoral degrees found that other national programs provided the respect they deserved. In many programs undergraduates now teach sections (formerly taught by GTAs) as unpaid "inters," thereby saving the university millions of dollars in wages. At least one former Kansan reporter remembers an administrator in 2003 claiming, "Who needs graduate level education at a public university, anyway?"
The new library fees instituted in 2012 $2 per book moved from the shelf and $3 per check out have finally allowed the KU library system to build a new storage facility.
although in the years before this fee was collected some 5,000 journals had been canceled (never to be renewed) and acquisitions had dropped 50 percent because of lack of space, financial support and adequate staffing. Although a new dean of libraries, hired in 2001, had tried to stanch this bleeding of intellectual resources, the new dean received little support from past administrations and state legislatures. The research library was considered a "drain" on Kansas finances and "of no possible use to the majority of Kansans" who remain ignorant to the value of higher education.
Johnson is a Marion, Iowa, graduate student in Slavic language and literature.
6.
7