4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2002
TALKTOUS
Jay Krail
editor
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Brooke Hesler and Kyle Ramsey
managing editors
864-4854 or bhester@kansan.com and
kramsey@kansan.com
Laurel Burchfield
readers' representative
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Maggie Koerth and Amy Potter
opinion editors
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Amber Agee
business manager
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Eric Kelting
retail sales manager
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Malcolm Gibson
general manager and news adviser
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KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD
Matt Fisher
sales and marketing adviser
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Hall Center incorporates past with ideas of future
A $3.26 million gift from the Hall Family Foundation in Kansas City, Mo., will fund a new Hall Center for the humanities.
The new building will not only make the center's programs more accessible to students, but it will also be a triumph for an often overlooked discipline.
Janet Crow, executive director of the Hall Center, said the original purpose of the Hall Center was for humanities faculty members to talk with colleagues in other areas about their research to gain a broader perspective.
Now the center has evolved to offer a variety of lecture series and faculty development programs.
Because the center offers a variety of programs, a new facility was necessary in order to continue their success. The Hall Center offers seminars and lectures which will be quite accommodating in the new conference room which seats 120 people.
What are the humanities about anyway? A rough translation of its mission is tying past generations to the present and the present to the future through cultural studies.
Currently the Hall Center must hold some lectures in the Kansas Union or the Alumni Center.
The center focuses on topics such as civilization's values and changes.
The center will continue its theme of connecting the present to the past by incorporating part of the 1887 Powerhouse, KU's oldest standing structure, into its facade.
The Center is tentatively scheduled to be completed in Spring 2004. The new two-story, 11,000-square-foot building east of the Dole Center will make the Hall Center more visible on campus.
The center is now located in its 6,800-square-foot building at 1540 Sunflower Rd., about 300 feet east from the new location which will be on Sunnyside.
A new building may not be a huge deal to most University of Kansas students, considering the abundance of renovations and construction work already underway. But "when it comes to major gifts and grants, the humanities are sometimes the neglected orphan at a university," Chancellor Robert Hemenway said in an recent article in the Lawrence Journal-World.
Although many students will have graduated by the time this new building is complete, they can still reap the benefits.
Humanities stresses community outreach, and its events are open to the public.
In its founding year of 1976, the Hall Center operated out of one office in the Spencer Research Library. When few large university buildings nationwide are designed specifically for a humanities department, a new building is more than a good deal — it's a triumph.
Heather McCarthy for the Editorial Board.
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Free for All
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Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
I'm just calling to tell everybody that the cure for the clap costs five bucks. Wild, promiscuous sex, here I come, baby, yeah!
I play video games, and there are two girls across the hall from me who have two vacuums, and they're always cleaning. I go to class, they're cleaning. I come back, they're cleaning, when I go to bed, when I wake up in the morning, they're cleaning. What is so important and fantastic about cleanliness?
son
son
Remind my associates to leave the gun and take the cannoli.
son
I drank too much green Kool-Aid today, and my poop is green. So how come when I eat Lucky Charms, I don't poop rainbows?
I've got a grand idea. Instead of suffering and being the no. 9 party school in the country, let's try to be no.1. Chancellor Bob, here's how we do that. We lower tuition; therefore, students have more money to spend on alcohol and drugs and, well, partying. Therefore our ratings go up, and at least we can be the no.1 school in basketball and partying. I mean, come on, that's something to be happy about. Party at my place!
son
Me and my roommate bought this canteelope a long time ago, back in August. And we left it in our fridge for a long time, and it grew blueberries. It's kinda cool. So we ate it.
What happens when Bob Barker dies? Does the show end? You can't replace Bob Barker. Without him, no one will be around to remind us to spay and neuter our pets. There will be wild animals running about, and dogs and cats will rule the world. It'll be the end of humanity, just because Bob Barker's dead.
--son
SACK'S VIEW
KANSAN REPORT CARD
Pass:
Fall Break. Only four more school days left to go. We could all use a little rest and relaxation.
John Waters. The "Sultan of Smut" encouraged students to be creative and push the boundaries in whatever they do. That's a message students need to hear more often. We can't think of a better "bad example" than Mr. Waters.
KU alumnus receives Nobel Prize. Vernon Smith, class of 1952, won a Nobel Prize for economics last Wednesday. KU may not be a top 25 research institution, but at least we're training some great researchers.
Fail:
Save Johnson. Voter registration is a worthy cause, but this campaign has a horrible name. Look alive Senate, promotions only work if people can figure out what on Earth you're promoting.
Campus All-Stars. Don't freshmen deserve a better reason to vote than the promise that they "won't regret it"? Campaign on issues kids, not funny wigs and body paint.
Shallenburger's bad timing. If Kansas gubernatorial candidate Tim Shallenburger really cared about student voters he would have planned his visit for a day other than fall break eve, when most students will be heading out of town.
Maggie Koerth/Kansan
PERSPECTIVES
Run KU like a real business put the needs of students first
GUEST COMMENTARY
This year's U.S. News & World Report rankings of public research institutions noted that, despite Chancellor Robert Hemenway's goal to be ranked as a top-25 public research university, the University of Kansas dropped to 41st. I am not surprised.
In my marketing class, we covered a crucial topic: customers buy products that fill needs, and our job as marketers is to fill that conscious or subconscious need.
John Westerhaus opinion@kansan.com
My increased tuition gives me classes taught by TA's. Many are good, but a few have obvious problems communicating the material effectively, for whatever reason
Sometimes the customer can articulate their needs, other times not, but their needs still exist and successful businesses strive to discover and fill them.
In order to fill a customer's needs, you have to know who they are. The customers at this University aren't Coke or the alumni. The real customers are the students enrolled here.
I have needs here at KU, but leaving here with a diploma doesn't meet all those needs.
I have learned a lot through the classes I've taken here. I have also learned about life and made friends, but that is independent of the University.
However, I can't buy Pepsi on campus.
However, students don't learn this until it's too late to remedy because we don't have aren't allowed to review teacher evaluations so we can make an educated choice about our classes.
In addition, tenured faculty members can't be removed except in cases of gross academic or professional misconduct.
I wait in long lines to enroll, despite the fact that the lack of online enrollment has been a complaint for some time.
The Chancellor wants KU First to raise $500 million in private funding for our school so we can be ranked in the top tier, a distinction handed out by a magazine run for profit just like any other business.
I won't see a dime, though, unless it's on television.
I received all sorts of correspondence this summer telling me that the University needed more money; I have received virtually no communication regarding
how my money will be spent.
Sure, I'll leave here with a degree, but at the expense of what? A lot of people accuse the University of being run like a business, however, if the University were a true business it wouldn't worry so much about funding.
It would worry about filling customer needs, because when customers are happy, the funding follows. The University will never reach its goal of being a top 25 reasearch university as long as it continues to ignore the needs of students.
The key is to fill our needs, whether we can articulate them or not. Not filling our articulated needs creates only resentment. In fact, the businesses that are most successful are the ones that anticipate needs that even the customers weren't aware they had.
I can't justify tuition increases if our money is misspent; the University seems to have a lot of ideas on how to waste money. If this University wants good ideas, though, I suggest this: treat students as though we are appreciated. After all, we're the reason you exist in the first place.
Giving me a sound education comes standard; make me feel important, though and you'll receive money from me long after I graduate.
Westerhaus is an Overland Park junior in business administration.
Preserve natural Kansas by volunteering for Monarch Watch
Every year KU students join groups such as the Environs and KU Greens. These groups work hard to show students and other citizens how to protect the environment.
However, there is a national organization on campus that, while often overlooked, does a great deal of work to preserve our natural environment.
Based in Lippincott Hall, Orley "Chip" Taylor, professor of biological sciences, heads Monarch Watch, a national study on the life cycles and migration of monarch butterflies.
KU students' walks on campus are occasionally graced by the fluttering wings of a monarch. Unfortunately, the numbers have been decreasing.
Alumni funding, along with funding from the Lawrence community has helped Monarch Watch's growing national success. That success should begin with KU volunteers.
There are currently 1,900 members across the U.S., mostly teachers, students and volunteers.
Students looking for ways to help the environment can find many valuable opportunities in the program and Monarch Watch is always looking for extra hands to help.
Volunteers of this ground-breaking studey tag the monarchs and record their sex in order to track the migration from the eastern Rocky Mountains to central Mexico.
GUEST COMMENTARY
Jessica Leibson
opinion@kansan.com
Volunteering for Monarch Watch would give the local support that would make its home base stronger.
Across the U.S., Taylor has formed volunteer groups often headed by naturalists to record the long journey of these persistent insects.
This particular program began in January, two years ago.
Monarch Watch's newest project
"Most things on the planet are driven by economics and there's no difference down there. If people need a resource from the
Members delivered $80,000 worth of school supplies, including textbooks, to 30 districts.
reaches out to communities in Mexico that house monarchs in the wintertime. Taylor has hoped to increase the monarch awareness to children in Mexico.
Another project of Monarch Watch is testing butterflies for pesticides. The results have not yet been produced, but regardless of the outcome, the loss of habitat is the most devastating problem that the monarchs face.
Sadly enough, if the monarchs have no place to journey to, they will continue on their path to extinction.
land and the land has it, they're going to take it," Taylor said.
If the KU and Lawrence community wish to enjoy the beauty of the same Jayhawk Boulevard that alumni remember as filled with butterflies, they need to support the nationally renowned research developed at our own university.
Students should volunteer at Monarch Watch on campus in order to protect our campus environment and the environmenl of North America.
Leibson is a Cleveland sophomore in journalism.