4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
...
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 14, 2001
TALKTOUS
Kursten Phelps
editor
864-8545 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
864-4452 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
mfseries@kansan.com
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
EDITORIAL Intramurals benefit from mailing lists
This year Recreation Services for the University of Kansas dropped team fees for intramural teams, but the current bureaucracy and information network for intramurals is antiquated. KU Recreation Services should look to cost-effective technology to increase participation.
Simple and inexpensive action can be taken to better inform students. Recreation Services should use a weekly or monthly mass e-mail list to regularly update residence hall, fraternity and sorority intramural chairpersons and other interested students about important dates and events.
Recreation Services posts information about intramural schedules and meetings in Robinson Center. It also posts information on its Web page, http://www.ku.edu/~recserv/Intramurals.htm. The site includes an intramural calendar of important turn in dates for team managers, officials meetings, and when different sport seasons begin. The site also links to a managers' manual and league results. However, the site falls short on its league standings link, which often turns up as "site not found" and has not been updated recently.
Signing up for intramurals can be as taxing as the activity itself. An interested student, intramural chair, or manager has to make several trips to Robinson to pick up and turn in forms, select time slots and check game times.
Robinson's location lends itself to students who like to walk long distances. Those who decide to drive must search for parking places, which often results in wasting gas and fronting laundry money to the Parking Department. The intramural registration process discriminates against a large number of students - those who are lazy, cheap, or both.
Technology, in the form of listservs, mass e-mail lists, and Web pages, offers teachers options for communicating with and informing students. KU's Recreation Services also should harness the University's computing services technology to improve the connection to students interested in intramurals.
Online registration of intramural teams could alleviate the barriers to many students participating in intramurals and could perhaps serve as a pilot program for the much anticipated online enrollment.
Recreation Services should also improve its Web page. A frequently updated, consistent calendar page should include game times and locations for all teams and sports in addition to important turn in dates and official meetings.
While the plans for a new and much improved Recreation Center have been postponed until 2003, why don't we harness the University's web resources and make immediate improvements that will benefit current students interested in ping pong (and other intramurals).
John Cathart-Rake for the editorial board
PERSPECTIVE
Media images keep women smooth and spending money
Progress toward equality between men and women in the 21st century needs to be re-examined — especially in the area of shaving. When the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, nothing was tacked on saying, "Oh, by the way, that also requires you to remove unsightly hair from your entire body till death do you part."
Whether to shave is one of life's biggest questions. It's one we ask ourselves every morning, and one we will continue to ask most mornings for the rest of our lives. Sorry to depress you, but that means you will have to make the shaving decision about 22,000 times during your stay on Earth.
And admit it. You hate to shave. Men hate it. Women hate it. Everybody hates it. But when the question is asked "do I shave today or not?" face it, you usually pick up the razor and just do it.
Let's say, just this once, that you elect to let the razor lie. What happens next may depend on whether you are a man or a woman. If a man doesn't shave, no worries — the 5 o'clock shadow gives him that rugged, sexy look. Women of various ages and professions have drooled over the stubble of Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Indiana Jones. But if a woman bans the Bic and steps outside her house wearing shorts, people and small animals run in all directions. Let's see, sexy vs. scary — something's not right here.
Life would be much easier if shaving
Dawn
North
Columnist
opinionskansan.com
Commentary
It all started with an advertising campaign in 1915. That May, Harper's Bazaar magazine featured a model wearing a sleeveless gown that exposed her bare shoulders and shaven underarms. The Wilkinson Sword Co. seized the moment and began targeting the female buyer. The goal of the ads was to convince her that underarm hair was unhygienic and unfeminine. (Evidently, male underarm hair is clean and manly.) The campaign worked. Razor sales doubled in the next two years. And as fashions and society changed, it became unacceptable for women to
Jean Kilbourne, critical media scholar, says that advertising is that someone. She writes that advertising tells us who we are and who we should be. And she may be right. At least that's the way it was for women and shaving.
Kilbourne says ads featuring men and women are different. The focus of females in ads is on how they look. The focus for males is how they act - tough or weak. That doesn't mean men are not susceptible to social pressures around them, but that the pressure society puts on women in regard to body image is much greater.
show unshaven legs.
were an involuntary reflex like breathing. But it isn't. Somewhere, somehow somebody is telling us there are different standards for men and women; Someone is whispering in our ears what is socially acceptable.
In Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Julia Wood writes that one of the main themes in the media is that men and women are portrayed in stereotypical ways that reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender. Because the media show unshaven men as acceptable and possessing sex appeal, that becomes a norm for society. And, because media never show a hairy female, but only smooth and slick ones, that trend is passed down from one oppressed woman to the next.
It really isn't fair. But advertisers don't claim to play fair. Money is what's important. Advertising is a $180 billion dollar a year industry. Our concern? Advertisers sell much more than products.
Oh well, with winter coming on, women can relax for a little while. The shaving question becomes easier to answer. Long sleeves and jeans can hide a lot.
North is a graduate student in journalism from Lenexa
PERSPECTIVE
Defending spirit of Watkins trust
We have been told not to waste our time and to avoid being so emotional. We have been told that it is simply bureaucracy — deal with it. The biggest bank in the United States and the University of Kansas have teamed up to see us quieted, but we will not back down.
After countless bank consolidations and mergers, the Elizabeth Miller Watkins Trust is with the largest bank in the United States: the Bank of America. The trust began in 1939 upon Watkins' death, and has since experienced lagging returns and questionable management. Since 1984, hall residents have questioned the administration of the Elizabeth Miller Watkins trust and irregularities in financial reports from the trust. The trust's interest rate, for instance, decreased from 11 percent in 1984 to 2.4 percent in 1999.
Some of the residents of Miller and Watkins Scholarship Halls have formed the Committee for the Preservation of Watkins and Miller Scholarship Halls. With the support of more than 300 alumnae across the country, hall residents hired an attorney in February 2000.
Years ago Miller Hall had major maintenance problems. Since the committee hired an attorney, the Department of Student Housing has installed air conditioning and fire sprinkler systems in the two halls, and maintenance
Sarah Jackson
Guest columnist
opinionkanans.com
Commentary
concerns that once took weeks to fix take days.
As we prepare for our third year of legal battle, the results have been positive, yet limited, because of numerous appeals by the bank that have lengthened the process. The court ruled in September 2000 that current residents of the two halls are in fact beneficiaries of the Watkins Trust. As beneficiaries, residents can legally question the management of the trust. The Bank of America appealed this decision and the Kansas Supreme Court denied hearing its requests. Since that denial, the bank has halted settlement talks and has hired one of the nation's top law firms — all to quiet a group of concerned scholarship hall residents.
Recently, the University has sided against residents. Settlement talks with the University have also failed. The University was unwilling to negotiate unless we gave up our standing as beneficiaries of the trust, which would forfeit the future rights of hall residents to question trust management. We refuse to give up the rights that we have already won in court.
What do we want? Not much, really. None of us will benefit financially from this endeavor. We simply want the bank and the University to obey Mrs. Watkins' original wishes outlined in her trust. For instance, we want the trust to maintain a rate of return comparable to similar trusts. We want the bank to be required to provide an annual line item reporting of trust business so that we can monitor expenditures.
Miller and Watkins Halls are an important part of the University of Kansas, and we would have liked the University to work with us toward a settlement. With or without it, we will not back down. Elizabeth Miller Watkins was one this University's biggest benefactors. How can we let the Bank of America and the University of Kansas ignore her wishes?
Sarah Jackson is an Abilene senior and vice president of Committee for the Preservation of Watkins and Miller Scholarship Halls, www.millerwatkins.org. Coauthor Kaili Kuiper is a Salina senior and president of the preservation committee.
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.
Gandhi said "Live simply so that others may simply live."
We just saw N'Sync in Miami.
I'm standing in the Atlantic Ocean right now, and I have nothing better to do than get sunburned and call the Free for All.
I'm supposed to be in chemistry now, but instead I'm swimming in the ocean. Go figure, I'm flunking the class.
to the ants in my bathroom. Please leave, I do not like you.
To the girl in my American People class with the green vest: You are one of the most attractive people I have ever seen in my life.
Never ride a small bicycle with boxer briefs on that are two sizes too small. Trust me.
I never thought I'd live in a world where I'd say "Thank God it's just a plane crash."
If drink then drive, is that considered drunk driving?
First my adviser yelled at me. Then I had to go to Nunemaker. Then I had to go back to Wescoe where I needed to be all along. Nice, huh?
Where are all the gay people on campus? All I see are militant lesbians.
Two words: Mittens Crow.
What's a weamer?
I know what a weaver is. It's a learner that's spelled wrong.
nere's bat that lives in 41/2 West stacks in Watson Library.
Can we make the girls' soccer team the starters for the football team?
What's the number for puppy poison control? My dog just ate my Prozac!
I just wanted to say thank you to the Nai-smith kids who pissed off the best bus driver and made him quit.
题
My roommate is sitting here complaining about girls in thongs. Is he crazy?
I suddenly realized that girls really do over-analyze things.
Look at those guys over there! They're wearing goggles, they must be hardcore!
I'm a sex object. Men want me, and women want to be me.
Sometimes, when I look in the mirror for a long time, my eyes get wide, like a tiger. Grrrr!
Annie just called me and said she was OK, so everyone can stop singing that song. Yeah..put that in your pipe and smoke it.
The Templin toilets are so wimpy.
Headline news! Fat guys drink in old bars
]
what has nine arms and sucks? Give up?
Def Leoard.
I would just like to thank you to my academic adviser for nothing.
---
I'm a blonde that lives alone and I found a long black hair in my sink.
My girlfriend is the karaoke goddess, and now she wants to dump me for some geeky karaoke DJ. Apparently he can satisfy her in ways I can't.
I thought freshman sorority girls were supposed to be easy.
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
My name is Jeff, and I enjoy watching Dawson's Creek.
Yeah, I'm just sitting at home watching Jeopardy and I decided that I don't need to go to class anymore because I'm a genius.
I got a rash, and it's starting to itch.
KU info people need to get some better phone manners.
To the three girls who drove behind my dorm and flashed everyone: My floor says thank you.
The KU women's soccer team is a microcosm of KU.
You know you're a college student when all you want for Christmas is a beer bong.
.
.