4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
FRIDAY, NOV.16, 2001
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Kursten Phelps
editor
Leita Schultes
Christina Neff
managing editors
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Erin Adamson
Brendan Woodbury
opinion editors
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opinion@kansan.com
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Kate Mariani
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Tom Eblen
general manager and
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Matt Fisher
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"iS IT POSSIBLE TO FEEL 'SAFER' AND 'CREEPED OUT' AT THE SAME TIME... KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
EDITORIAL
Students should demand better Sprint service
In the last few months, many area Sprint PCS wireless customers have reported problems with their cellular service. These problems include poor signal quality, dropped calls and errors with voice mail service. As a major cellular provider, Sprint needs to provide forthright information to its customers about the cause of these problems and how it plans on improving the situation.
According to the company's 2000 annual report, Sprint PCS is the fourth largest and fastest growing wireless provider in the United States. Last year, its customer base grew by 70 percent. The company claims its technology provides "inherent security, superior voice quality and higher capacity for both voice and data applications." PCS service now covers about 80 percent of the U.S. population.
Sprint customers who have contacted service representatives about recent problems have reported receiving vague or confusing answers. Some Sprint representatives denied any knowledge of service problems in the area, citing few customer complaints. Those representatives who did acknowledge problems could not provide specifies about when wireless service would improve.
As a result of this confusion, PCS customers are circulating a variety of rumors about the cause of the problems. Some customers believe that a recent increase in local customers has overloaded Sprint's bandwidth as allocated by the Federal Communications Commission. Others believe that Sprint is in the process of upgrading its signal towers, and the company has begun tearing down old towers before building new ones, resulting in a temporary decrease in signal strength. Another rumor is that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks damaged the company's communication infrastructure.
Regardless of the actual cause of these service problems, two things need to change in the immediate future. First, any PCS customers experiencing problems with their wireless service need to voice a formal complaint to Sprint's customer service department. Unspoken grievances accomplish nothing, and the problems aren't likely to improve until PCS's profit is threatened by consumer discontent. Second, Sprint needs to address these grievances in an honest, consistent manner. Company representatives should acknowledge the problems, detail their causes and estimate when service will improve.
In the future, Sprint should be more proactive about providing information regarding obstacles to its wireless service. Letters and e-mails should be sent to registered customers and stockholders detailing potential problems and their solutions. It's not just good business practice; it's a necessity for the well being of the company's customers.
The days when wireless communication was a luxury are long gone. Cellular subscribers depend on their phones to keep up relationships, do business, and ensure personal safety. Emerging technologies should bear the same standard of public accountability as all other industries.
Matt Hubbard for the editorial board.
Sprint PCS customers experiencing service problems should contact service representatives at 1-888-211-4PCS or visit www.sprintpcs.com.
PERSPECTIVE
New York needed the World Trade Center just when it disappeared from the skyline
It might be hard to imagine now, but in its day the World Trade Center got no respect.
While it was here, New Yorkers lavished their love on the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the Brooklyn Bridge. Grand Central Station made the coffee-table books. Even the tourist-plagued Statue of Liberty, victim of thousands of key-chain effigies and snowglobe prisons, got more props from her fellow New Yorkers than the gawky trade center.
"Nobody roots for Goliath," a famous Kansan once said, and could have said from one center to another. Architecture critics hated the stark lines and in-your-face verticality. You took your out-of-town visitors there, and then you ignored it. In movies and on television, the towers got their due only when the camera panned the city skyline. Otherwise, the rest of New York took the starring roles. Movie stars meet cute on top of the Empire State Building, or in front of Tiffany's or at Rockefeller Center, not at the front lobby of Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Discover & Co.
That's too bad, because the New York City of recent times has much more in common with the trade center than any of its monuments to antiquity. My fiancee and I first realized this when we moved to New York early last year. My previous visits hinted to the contrary, but part of me was still expecting the New York my parents left behind in the 1960s: a place where radiators rattle all night, where neighbors sidestep the local drug dealer, where stairwells smell like urine and where nobody except the foolish take the subway.
The city we moved to turned out to have a lot more in common with
Commentary
Carlos
Tejada
Guest columnist
opinionakansan.com
Olathe. Abandoned buildings had been turned into $1.2 million condominiums. Judging by the sheer number of cotton pullovers and wrinkle-free khakis on the citizenry, the city's population had become Banana Republic foot soldiers. Hot dog vendors were chased off Broadway. Union Square, one of the birthplaces of the 1960s countercultural movement, now features not one, not two, but three Starbucks for your latte pleasure. New Yorkers, flush with easy dot-com cash and a booming stock market, bought themselves into a bourgeois sameness with the rest of the nation.
They included my fiancee, who switched trains underneath the south tower, and me, who crossed the plaza every morning and took the underground mall every night on my way to and from my office next door.
The World Trade Center was the perfect symbol for New York 2.0. Its 30,000 workers — from Connecticut bluebloods to Staten Island third generation Irish and Italians to its Dominican and Nigerian newcomers — traded the bonds and negotiated the settlements that made this affluence possible. Thousands more passed through it and over it and around it and underneath it on their way to do the city's business.
New York's other landmarks had more flourishes, were more ornate and
inspired a lot more bad sidewalk-sale paintings. But they're old, untouchable and, in their way, unreal. They're symbols of a time that doesn't exist anymore.
The World Trade Center was now. It breathed. It was a place to work and — in the sense that a life's work could be completed there — a place to live. People cheered and cried and fought and won and lost in those two towers. At night its lines seemed stately, not dawning, and the 24-hour glow from its windows seemed full of possibility.
That's one reason I proposed to my fiancee there on a cool Saturday night last May. I had another, even more foolish reason: We could point it out to our children and grandchildren whenever they saw it on TV.
I hate to think that the loss of the towers means an end to this bright, theme-park version of New York. True, at times it has the subtlety and tact of a TV awards show. But it was our New York, and I see it disappearing when the see the glum faces in the street, and the silence as people pass the Xeroxed faces of the missing still hanging in storefront windows, and the stillness in front of the flower-decked the fire stations.
It's been singed and tossed into the wind, like the page from a World Trade Center accounting book that landed at my feet the morning of Sept. 11 as I headed to the hospital to donate blood. Within its burnt edges, the words are perfectly readable, as if it could be turned to in a moment to take care of business.
Tejada is a KU alumnus. He is staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal.
PERSPECTIVE
Only haters know how to love
I guess this is suppose to be "Hate Out Week." We are being vaguely encouraged to "stop the hate" and embark on a "Journey Toward a Hate Free Millennium." This is a journey I encourage you all to reject, if you hold any respect for life or love at all.
I am very picky about the things that I love. I am just as picky about the things that I hate. You could even say that they are one in the same; my capacity to love creates my capacity to hate.
I have putyears of thought and work into the ideas I hold, and they are as dear to me as life itself. The passion I feel for the things I love is the same passion I feel when those values are attacked or disregarded.
I am proud to say that I hate murders, rapists and terrorists. I am proud to say that I hate violence, statism and blind faith. I hate them all because I love life.
A millennium without hate would be a millennium without love and a millennium not worth living through. It is not hatred then that we need to do away with. What we need to do away with is the superficial, the thoughtless and the irrational.
This "Hate Out" week was intended to attack hatred caused by things like racism. But by attacking "hate" instead, the proponents of this event
Rachelle Cauton
Columnist
opinioniansan.com
Commentary
There are few people today who think that racism is a good thing, but there are even fewer people who can actually tell you why. The general consensus is that you should not be mean to someone because of their skin color —but why not?
show themselves to be as misguided as those they intend to oppose.
If we actually want to fight racism, it is time to take another step past this elementary school answer and evaluate the premise behind it.
The fundamental philosophy behind racism is that of collectivism. It claims that a person's self-worth, or lack thereof, comes from a group. This idea goes against the very nature of human beings.
Whether you spit on people because of a group they belong to or hug them for it, you are committing the same crime. You are falling into the devastating, irrational trap of collectivism.
All of us have our own mind and make our own decisions; our identities are completely independent of any other person or group. With a collectivist approach, we lose those
identities — we lose ourselves.
Instead of doing battle against collectivism, though, we are called to do battle against the trivial act of being mean or even worse, we are called to do battle with the emotion of hatred in general.
general.
This comes from an absolutely superficial, thoughtless view of the world, a view that is just as destructive as the irrational idea of racism itself
Rather than a week against hate, we should be holding a week in support of reason, the only thing that can battle the devastatingly irrational ideas behind homophobia, violence and racism.
The very least we could do is have a week to sit and think a little more deeply about these problems before we trivialize them by ignoring their root and devoting a week to the battle of a perfectly natural emotion, such as hate.
Rachelle Cauthon is a junior in biochemistry from Overland Park.
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Yeah, my girlfriend just cheated on me with a curt that's 32 years old.
I think it's safe to say that now, more than ever, the Kansans need Seth Jones back.
If all you can do is repeatedly take shots at Terry Allen, then you’re not good reporter
Actually, Annie is not DK, she got hit by a smooth criminal about a month ago. Now she wishes a self-proclaimed gentleman would give her a call.
This is for the guy who called and thanked the flashers; I'm one of the flashers and we just want to say, "Anytime."
My parents haven't called me in two-and-a-half months. That's kind of depressing.
My roommate just came home and told me she climbed a tree to save a cat, and now she's my hero.
I would like to say thanks to the doctor at Watkins who told me I had the flu and I actually had the chicken pox.
n, this is Battenfeld. Where's our water,
man?
I like large women, and they like me.
Requesting an exterminator in Neilsmith. There is a jay bird infestation.
It's a lot easier to get over someone when you know there is someone else.
n, this is Battenfeld. Where's our water,
man?
It might just be me, but I think all my ex-girlfriends are crazy.
Someone tell our neighbors across the street to undress with their blinds open, the shadows are driving me crazy.
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Hopefully this anthrax stuff will disappear, like the band did.
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n, this is Battenfeld. Where's our water,
man?
My roommate owes me money, and she offered to pay me in beer, and I agreed. Maybe I am an alcoholic.
Puppy poison control update: The dog hasn't slept in 48 hours, and refused to do anything but watch Opew, eat chocolate and drink Mountain Dew.
Uh...what's the meaning of life? I think it's a good cereal.
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I was just thinking that my roommates and I are the six coolest people in Lawrence, and no one even knows it.
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it's called Dr. Mario, then why does my neck hurt so much after playing?
Anybody who parks on the 1300 block of Ohio and doesn't live there needs to learn how to parallel park.
I'm a nice guy, and I was just wondering if there were any funny, attractive, intelligent women left on the KU campus.
When I grow up I want to live in GSP.
Hey, I lost my graphing calculator on Wescoe Beach and I really want someone to give it back to me.
I figured out how Watkins is able to afford 25 cent condoms; they break. Then they make you pay $20 for a morning-after pill.
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Girls, take note: Long hair equals good.
Short hair equals bad.
KU2030
The opinion page is soliciting student and faculty projections of life at KLI in 2030.
Submissions should be sent to opinion@kansan.com or brought to 111 Stauffer-Flint. Call Brendan Woodbury at 864-4924 with questions.
Ideas:
Essays
- The future of corporate sponsors
- The appearance or disappearance of academic departments Your organization in thirty years Art
- Jayhawk logo
- The view looking down Jayhawk
- Roulvard
- Drawings for new campus buildings
- An entry in a freshman's diary
- A class syllabus
Alternative uses for the ruins of Wescoe Hall
Brad for a bar on Mass. st
A Kansan story on a press con-
ference announcing online
enrollment in 2034