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4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
102
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24,2002
TALK TO US
Jay Krall
editor
864-4854 or jkrall@kansan.com
Brooke Hesler and Kyle Ramsey
managing editors
864-4854 or bhesler@kansan.com and
kramsey@kansan.com
Laurel Burchfield
readers' representative
864-4810 or lbuchfield@kansan.com
Maggie Koerth and Amy Potter
opinion editors
864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Amber Agee
business manager
864-4358 or advertisement@kansan.com
Eric Kelting
retail sales manager
864-4358 or
advertising@kansan.com
Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
864-7667 or mgibson@kansan.com
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
864-7666 or mfsheer@kansan.com
KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD
Library needs to give laptops better advertising
The University of Kansas is the proud new owner of 40 laptops, but because of a flawed advertising campaign few students know it.
Since the beginning of the school year, Watson, Spencer and Anschutz libraries have offered laptops for in-house rental to students.
Funded by private donations from the KU Parents Initiative, this innovative laptop rental program was created to help make the lives of those with no personal computer a bit easier.
The problem is many students don't know this service exists. Though there has been publicity for this new program, it has been restricted to the libraries.
Sarah Couch, director of access services for Watson Library, said the laptop program committee has promoted the program by posting printed signs and hanging banners in the library. The committee has also put notice of the program on the library's Web site.
The reality is the student body does not frequently congregate at the library.
However, students do not know about the program because the advertisements are not where the students are.
frequently engages it
It is only the occasional student who joyfully skips off to a weekend in the stacks. The same is true with the library Web site; unless one is quite cozy with the
site, it is easy to pass over the notice of the program.
Granted, thinking up ways to advertise is easier than financing them.
This is too generous of a gift to rely on library banners and word of mouth for publicity.
The money to advertise this program would have to come from an already tight library budget.
The University needs to loosen its vice grip on the purse strings and get the word out to the student body. Many methods of advertising are expensive,but a handful of them are not.
Putting up flyers around the campus is an effective and relatively cheap practice that almost never fails to grab a college student's attention.
Another cost effective strategy would be to put a colorful banner up extolling the merits of this program on the University Web site.
Perhaps just moving the posters from the libraries to the Kansas Union would increase participation in this program.
Given that tuition and fees have risen rapidly in the last few years, the University should allocate some funds to make this program known to the students who can benefit from it.
Katy Birge for the Editorial Board.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Give donors praise,respect
This is in response to the Oct. 16 Face-off ("Should scholarships be only merit based?").
First and foremost, I would like to clarify all of the "rumors" and discussion on the KU First Scholarships.
The decision on how the scholarships were awarded were made by INTRUST and the Endowment Association.
How do I know this? Because Dick and Jeanne Tinberg are my uncle and aunt who have made very charitable donations to this university in the past and present.
If there are issues, suggestions and criticism about the way the scholarships were handled, they should be directed at INTRUST and the Endowment, instead of the donors who truly believe academic support to students is first priority of any university.
Dick and Jeanne Tinberg believed they were helping students with their academic pursuits especially during times when college costs have risen and students' pockets are empty.
I am certain those students who benefited truly appreciate the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Tinberg and hope that the dissension around how the scholarships were awarded will not hinder other alumni from offering scholarships to students or donations to University activities. $25,000 is nothing to sneeze at.
I did not attend the game or receive an award.
Instead of saying, "poor me, I was at the library studying on that day." I am saying, "good for you" to those students who were lucky enough to have received some financial assistance.
For all students on campus, let's just hope that donors are not mislead or maligned in doing something they truly feel is important; helping students pursuing their academic dreams.
There should be a public apology made to the Tinbergs for misrepresenting their generous donation.
Joan Houghton Doctoral Student in Special Education
Israel guilty of ignoring U.N.
In her column on Oct. 8 ("Bush's threats of force to Iraq justified by international law"), Audrey Snyder asserted that war against Iraq is justified because Iraq has been violating United Nations Security Council resolutions for several years.
If upholding international law is truly the driving force behind the upcoming war, then there are a few other countries we should consider attacking first.
In his address to the UN on September 12, President Bush declared that Iraq "would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year" if it could acquire enough plutonium.
This is precisely why we should be concerned that Israel - which had more than 200 nuclear warheads back in 1994 - is the world's sixth largest nuclear power.
While we have been imposing economic sanctions against Iraq to encourage it to comply with UN resolutions, the United States has been giving one third of its entire foreign aid to Israel, even though the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty bans military assistance to any country that has not signed it.
While Iraq has been dodging international weapons inspectors, Israel has been beyond the reach of inspectors because it refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—an international treaty ratified by 187 countries including the U.S. and Iraq.
If we are truly concerned about enforcing international law and protecting peace, we must first stop supplying money and weapons to the country that has defied more UN resolutions than any other and which refuses to open its nuclear weapons stockpiles to international inspectors.
To do otherwise would mean we are violating international laws ourselves.
To do otherwise would be hypocritical.
To do otherwise would clearly show that President Bush isn't telling us his true motives for invading Iraq.
Sean Ringey Clearwater Junior
LYDAS VIEW
Mark Lyda/Kansan
Voting campaigns educate, but can't control,the voters
PERSPECTIVES
Be sure of one thing. No one in the Student Legislative Awareness Board has ever said that who you vote for does not matter.
GUEST COMMENTARY
We submitted statements this week to the opinion editor that we feel were taken out of context, and we believe were used as nothing more than filler in a column that was lacking.
To set the record straight, voting is an incredibly important decision, not an arbitrary choice. Nonetheless, it is an individual's decision to make on his or her own, and the opinions of columnists have no bearing upon that decision.
SLAB is putting all of its force behind a campaign to get every KU student to the polls. But we are also working to ensure that every KU student has information about candidates, polling locations and so on. That can all be found on SLAB's Web site. www.ku.edu/~slab.
It is easy to pick one aspect of this voting campaign and apply unsubstantiated criticism to it.
What is not easy, and what takes hours of work from dedicated students, is to register 3,428 new student voters in Douglas County. Moreover, it takes many hours of work to record this information in order to provide outreach and information to new voters, information they will use when standing in the polling booth.
johanna Maska and Jeff Allmon opinion@kansan.com
pushing students to vote, only for voting sake, is just closing their eyes to the truth.
People who would say that SLAB is
Students know what is important to them. They will be the ones to decide upon what issues will sway their vote one way or another.
We can encourage students, we can urge them, we can plead with them to become informed; but that is all. Beyond that, it is their choice to make up the criteria upon which they choose a candidate.
As we said before, if they want to base a decision upon a candidate's stance on education, that is their choice. Even if they want to base a decision upon the appearance of a candidate, that too is their choice; and there is absolutely nothing that can be said about the validity or value of that vote versus another.
Ultimately, most people who do make the effort to vote are informed about their choices. The instances when a person makes utterly random decisions in the
polling booth is so rare as to not pose any threat to democracy.
Moreover, efforts by anyone to curb this phenomenon could only be equated to the literacy tests used in the post civil war south.
Who should be the one to deem others educated about their vote? The President? Our Governor? Joe Pull, Kansan columnist? We surely hope not.
Sure, we all have individual tales about people voting on the basis of hair color, or criteria that we simply disagree with.
Individual value judgments are made in the polling booth in regard to individual choices, but individual preferences have absolutely no normative credence when applied to the individual choices of other people; especially those that take place when voting.
However, both concerns have the same irrelevant weight.
We as the Student Legislative Awareness Board wouldn't have it any other way.
The beauty of America is that we all do have the choice to vote by whatever means we see fit.
Allmon is a Wichita senior in philosophy. Maska is a Galesburg, Ill., junior in journal-sim. They are the directors of the Student Legislative Awareness Board.
Free for All Call 864-0500
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansas editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
For more comments, go to www.kansan.com.
This is to the girl that said she got two parking tickets in one day. Here's a fact not commonly known by some people: KU parking doesn't give tickets if you're legally parked. Seriously, you should try it sometime.
I just wanna say yeah to Boria's article to the penis. We need to see more bulging packages on campus.
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Some dude just ripped a fart during my western civ. midterm... at least I hope it was a dude 'cause I don't know but, chicks just shouldn't be farting.
B
Do you know what would be funny? If one day, as a practical joke, somebody actually picked up the phone instead of leaving the Free for All answering machine message.
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Not to give anybody any ideas. Mwahahahahaha.
To the girl who lent me a pen in Haworth Hall today, not only were you a nice person, but you were also kind of cute.
I wore a Speedo on spring break, and everybody said I was gay or European.
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I was just wondering what was up with KU Info not giving out any more numbers after November. That's crap.
I'm calling in response to Audrey Snyder's "Downloading your music is the equivalent of shioplifting" article. I'd just like to say that article sucks, and if she were a true music lover she'd just shut the hell up.
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My roommate just told me she likes to watch naked yoga. I think Meghan Behm should write about that for next week.
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I just wanted to let the entire student body at the University of Kansas to know that I am the only dude in Lawrence with a 95 pound pumpkin. It's oh so massive.
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The Kansan welcomes letters to the editors and guest columns submitted by readers.
Nickelback should be Mizzo's official band because Nickelback sucks and so does Mizzo.
In response to the Free for All about how sorority girls don't study except for one week, we study every day of the week, over 30 hours, except on Friday when we go out because we have lives
Submitting letters and guest columns
The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length, or reject all submissions. For any questions, call Maggie Koerth or Amy Potter at 864-4924 or e-mail at opinion@kansan.com. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the readers' representative at readersrep@kansan.com.
The Kansan will attempt to run as many submissions as possible that conform to the guidelines below.
GUEST COLUMN GUIDELINES
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Also:
Columnists must come to 111 Stauffer-Flint to get their picture taken
LETTER GUIDELINES
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Include:
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opinion@kansan.com
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