WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20, 2002
4A • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20,2002
FACE-OFF
Who is king of the road on campus?
Face-Off is a weekly project of the Kansas editorial board. Each Wednesday two editorial board members will argue opposing sides of a hot-button issue that affects students at the University of Kansas. We hope that this section will help students to understand both sides of an argument and make
better decisions about their own beliefs.
If you have a suggestion for a topic that could be used in Face-Off, or if you would like to join the editorial board, please call Maggie Koerth or Amy Potter at 864-4924. You can also email suggestions to opinion@kansan.com.
Cars endanger lives of walking multitude
Too often, pedestrians get a bad rap.
Accustomed to walking on a campus with restricted traffic during the day, pedestrians appear to have no fear.
This is communicated not so much in the confrontational, Midnight Cowboy style of "I'm walkin' here," but instead can be observed in the pedestrian's unbreakable stride and piercing glare.
However, on campus, pedestrians do deserve the most consideration and courtesy. Cars and their drivers pose much more of a danger or threat to our safety and well-being.
KU is a pedestrian-friendly campus without pedestrian-friendly traffic.
Sure, pedestrians do stupid things; darting out between parked cars, walking really, really slowly across busy Jayhawk Boulevard, and strolling out in front of buses. But, there are far more smart pedestrians than there are stupid ones.
Drivers must be faulted for not wholly understanding a four-way stop, the purpose of a crosswalk or the concept of common courtesy.
Pedestrians who walk on campus at night are both a little more observant and possibly a little more scared—not because of worries about crime, but because they have to fend for themselves
on a campus taken over by cars.
With awkward on-campus intersections like those of 15th Street and Angel Road, 15th Street and Naismith Drive, and anywhere around the Chi Omega fountain, pedestrians often find it difficult and dangerous to cross the street because of unviolating traffic.
Those one- and two- ton hunks of plastic and metal and those who drive them pose more of a threat to the general safety and well-being of the public.
If at times pedestrians seem aggressive or stupid, it's because they have to actively assert their rights because cars aren't willing to let them cross the street.
This needless aggravation can be easily solved.
At the same time that pedestrians need to be more aware of both their actions and their surroundings, drivers also need to be much more cognizant and considerate of pedestrians.
Drivers need to be alert, especially when cruising through campus at night, and should be considerate of those students patiently waiting to cross.
Eventually, drivers will have to get out of their cars and be pedestrians too.
Lauren Stewart dissenting
Pedestrians cause more problems than cars on University streets
Mark Lyda/Kansar
Ah, life at a university. A place where a student can blindly walk across any and all intersections and know cars will screech to a halt and quiver in fear at his aura of invincibility.
Students obliquely walk everywhere and anywhere without caring about their surroundings. As soon as students arrive within the perimeter of this University, the laws of physics cease to exist.
However, it is troubling that, if a pedestrian gets hit, no matter how stupid he is being, it's at least partly the driver's fault.
Well here's a tip: When we match up a 150-pound person and a 3,000-pound car, the barreling hunk of cold steel is going to win every time. When we match up that same pedestrian to a 10-ton bus the results are going to be far more gruesome.
True, pedestrians do have the right of way.
Perhaps that moral victory will raise the spirits of a now former pedestrian with two broken legs and an internal hemorrhage.
The problem of dangerous pedestrians is easy to fix. Some of you may recall your kindergarten teachers covering this same material.
PERSPECTIVES
First, students need to learn to look for cars before crossing the street. How many times should a pedestrian look?
Probably more than the campus average of zero. Perhaps more than one way as well.
Looking both ways before crossing the street will help pedestrians create a safer environment on this campus for them
selves and the drivers of vehicles.
There are other things that can be done as well. For instance, pedestrians can start crossing at the crosswalks.
As a reminder, those are the spaces of the street covered with big, white lines. Those lines mean that it is safe to cross in that area.
They are often associated with stop signs, so drivers will be expecting to stop in those places.
If pedestrians learn to look both ways and use the crosswalks they won't have to worry about surprising drivers and will increase their chances of surviving college.
Dan Osman for the editorial board
More funds should be devoted to environmental research
The latest technical advancements in the fields of pharmacy, wireless communications and the evolution of the Internet had their humble beginnings in small labs of elite universities, including ours. And perhaps it was never imagined in those days that these experiments would later revolutionize the way the world lives.
Today, I see that we have an opportunity to break with the past once more.
A large majority of scientists think that the current global warming due to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is caused primarily by the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas.
We eagerly wait for significant research outcomes in the fields of alternate and renewable sources of energy and efficiency. More than an opportunity, I see a necessity. There are impending dangers if this is not taken seriously.
GUEST COMMENTARY
Human activities are thought responsible for the adding up of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. I have read articles and looked at Web Sites that try to suggest that global warming is a myth.
I did not find anything impressive because the overwhelming results are in opposition to such theories.
According to National Academy of Sciences, the Earth's surface temperature rose 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Numerous studies have shown a decrease in the thickness of ice cover over the poles. Global warming is responsible for a rise in sea level, change in precipitation, effects on human health and ecosystems.
Anil Kumar Nimmagadda
opinion@kumon.com
Studies on the "Phoenix Brown cloud" and the huge "Asian Brown cloud (ABC)" reveal threats. A brown
Talking about fossil fuels, how can we forget the immediate and enormous air pollution?
cloud is a dense blanket of pollution which can be two to three miles thick.
The ABC has already resulted in erratic weather, causing floods and famines in parts of South Asia
The health hazards are numerous contributing to an average increase in respiratory ailments. This leads to higher mortality rates from heart and lung diseases.
Research at KU and many other institutions has shown that the formation of brown clouds has a global affect causing drastic climate changes.
The requirement of global participation has been seen long before and led to the formation of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in 1994.
The participating countries in UNFCC adopted the Kyoto protocol in 1997. The Kyoto climate-change treaty entails certain commitments on the part of developed countries to reduce the emission of green house gases.
The U.S. has recently opted out of Kyoto treaty because it is thought that complying with the treaty would harm the economy.
While we await the advent of new technologies and protocols, a good step in this direction we can take is to start energy conservation.
The California Energy Commission says that it has achieved 5 to 10 percent savings in energy consumption through conservation. Much of it has been attributed to an increase of awareness
among users
Buying a fuel-efficient car, maintaining it properly and using heat and electricity judiciously are a few conservation tips we all can follow. This would also help us to bring down our energy bills.
It is good to know that the University is considering using wind energy for all the energy needs on the Hill.
University research labs have always been a valuable source of information
I feel it's high time to maximize funding for basic research in advanced energy technologies at KU and other universities.
It is sure to revolutionize the way Americans live, not to mention the change it would bring in the foreign policies of all the countries of the globe.
Nimmagadda is an India graduate student in computer engineering
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Free for All
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For more comments; go to www.kansan.com.
100
What I don't understand is you conservatives who are willing to fight, die and kill for your freedoms, but then you just go and hand them over to someone like George W. Bush, who will surely and
methodically strip them away, I just don't get it.
whole war mess?
I was driving around Lawrence today and noticed that we have a Missouri Street. So I wanted to apologize to all the people who live on Missouri, because as we all know, Mizzou sucks.
whole war mess?
I have a great idea for an experiment. It's called the resident exchange program.Take about five girls from GSP/Corbin and move them over to Hash. Take about five people from Hashinger and move them over to GSP/Corbin, and see who survives longest without being injured by others.
whole war mess?
I'm watching Channel 6 right now, and the graphic they have for a hockey player looks like a sumo wrestler holding a hockey stick.
B
whole war mess?
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Does anybody else think that if Dick Cheney would just let George W. Bush watch the WB just a little more, we wouldn't be in this
Um, I think I'm falling in love with Master P.
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Ah, the smell of the Kaw. Or maybe I should say, uh, the smell of durg.
I'm trying to sleep, and the stupid, lower class drunks are keeping me up. Beer and stupidity go hand in hand.
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When you leave a club and the car engine is still warm from when you went in, that's a really good sign that it sucks.
B
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Uh, yeah, this is a car full of KU students...
well, two of us, and we just drove to Des Moines for no reason. We're on our way back now. We just thought we'd tell you that.
OK, guys, I'm in a car, and I'm sitting next to a girl who attends the University of Missouri, and she sucks. Bya.
喜
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Uh, yeah, we're visiting some friends at Mizzou right now, and besides the beer that we brought from school, it's official, Mizzou sucks.
I've gotta say, and I'm probably not the only one that thinks this, but this whole enrollment process is ridiculous.
You can love green M&M's. You can eat green M&M's all the time, and they can be your favorite kind of M&M's, but sometimes just sometimes, you want a red one.
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I just drove by a semi that had Christmas lights all over the outside of it. Isn't that cool?
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Have you ever had a dream that you wrote your entire English paper? So you relax, you just lay there, and you get in your sleep before class. Then you wake up for class, and you realize that you really didn't write your paper at all? Yeah, it's not good.