4A = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2002
TALKTOUS
Jay Krall editor 864-4854 or jkral@kansan.com
Brooke Hesler and Kyle Ramsey managing editors 864-4854 or bhheler@kansan.com and kramsey@kansan.com
Laurel Burchfield readers' representative 864-4810 or iburchfield@kansan.com
Maggie Koerth and Amy Potter opinion editors 864-4924 or opinion@kansan.com
Amber Agee business manager 864-4358 or advertising@kansan.com
Eric Kelting retail sales manager 864-4358 or advertising@kansan.com
Malcolm Gibson general manager and news adviser 864-7567 or mgibson@kansan.com
Matt Fisher sales and marketing adviser 864-7566 or mfahser@kansan.com
KANSAN EDITORIAL BOARD
Open up your eyes and ears to KU's radical history
Only three years after Quantrill's raiders reduced Massachusetts Street to rubble, the University of Kansas opened its doors for the first time.
From its inception KU has never strayed far from its unruly roots. It has defied expectation, teetered on the brink of chaos, and returned again, several times.
Why then are KU students so unaware of the specifics of our history?
Ask the typical KU student for a pivotal moment in KU history and most answers will involve Roy Williams.
Roy certainly occupies at least one of these moments, but how many students know about when the KU chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society protested the racially exclusionary policies of the Greek system? Or about the Civil Rights Council sit-in at Chancellor Wescoe's Strong Hall office? Or the April 1970 $1 million arson of the Kansas Memorial Union?
Throughout the 1960s, social activism was pervasive in Lawrence. Berkeley and the University of Kansas were mentioned in the same sentence.
Most don't, but each of these events have had a profound impact on KU. Moreover, this is recent history. It's the duty of students and of KU to ensure that these events, however unflattering, are not forgotten.
In May of 1969, Chancellor Wescoe hastily canceled an ROTC event that threatened to send two waiting National
Guard battalions into campus. He later remarked that had the event not been canceled "Kent State would have happened here."
Less than a year later campus exploded with activism. During April of 1970 campus unrest was surging, starting with massive protests in response to the suspiciously political, denied promotion of two liberal faculty members (whom were later promoted).
In the following months, a number of bombs were detonated or found on campus. On April 20 the fire at the Kansas Union happened and was followed by a three day, dusk-to-dawn curfew, enforced by the National Guard. The perpetrators of the Union arson have never been identified.
The revolutionary spirit from which KU was born has never left it for long. Sometimes it reemerges to remind us that we're not just another Midwestern university.
Students spend hours dedicated to the history of revolutions while our own remains neglected. Whether we ignore our own history out of apathy or in order to bowdlerize it is debatable. Despite this, there are encouraging signs of a renewal in KU history. One source is www.kuhhistory.com. To matter though, everyone must take an interest.
As a campus we shouldn't forget it, and we shouldn't let others forget it either.
Greg Holmquist for the Editorial Board.
Call 864-0500
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To whoever called in with the haiku a few days ago, I have one thing to say to you.
My grades are dropping because I hate all my classes. Oh guys, my life sucks.
图
No one will ever be really free until nerd persecution ends.
--town. We're looking for good guys. We're very high-moraled, we're all graduating this year, we're looking for good boys. We're beautiful, I promise, beautiful beautiful girls looking for great guys. High morals, preferably maybe good GPAs, intelligent, great future goals, family oriented...
Three beautiful women seeking wonderful boys with high morals, good looks, and very intelligent would be preferred. Please go to Buffalo Bob's...oh, I just screwed up. Buffalo Wild Wings, not Buffalo Bob's, and meet us there. We are just searching for wonderful guys. There are no guys in this
The lady on campus who accidently bumped her head on a stop sign while power-walking, you totally made my morning. Heheheheh.
--with so many things that needed to be done.
I don't know if anyone else thinks this, but me and Anna really believe that Dairy Queen should deliver. I mean that would really just make so many of my nights.
Happy birthday to my little brother Bratt, who's gonna be a future Jayhawk. And good luck with your first football game.
There's a lot goin' on, but there always is, isn't there?
with so many things that needed to be done.
(group chanting) Nerd, nerd, nerd, nerd,
nerd, nerd, nerd, nerd.
Current Wal-Mart equals bad, new Wal-Mart equals good.
with so many things that needed to be done.
STAYSKALS VIEW
BY THE NUMBERS
Gene Stayskal/Knight Ridder
$2,236 Cost of the 19-meal plan per year.
3,625 Number of students using a meal plan. Source: Dept. of Student Housing.
Source: Dept. of Student Housing,
20%
Percentage of total auxiliary points used so far for dining in the Union.
Source: Dept. of Student Housing.
8-10
Number of entrees served each day at Mrs. E's dining hall.
Source: Dept. of Student Housing.
$6.80
Cost to eat dinner at Mrs. E's without a meal plan.
Source: Dent, of Student Housing.
$8.78
PERSPECTIVES
Cost of an all-you-can-eat adult dinner with drink at Furr's Cafeteria, 2300 Iowa St.
Source: Furr's Cafetena
Rainy days give new perspective on life and the passage of time
I'm sitting home this afternoon, stranded by the rain on a Saturday that was meant to be filled with so many things that needed to be
Instead of running errands that I can't do during the weekdays when I'm at work, I'm flopped across a sofa that's choked with dog and cat hair, nursing a sinus headache that rolls in unfailingly with each change in the weather, just like an old man's gout.
GUEST COMMENTARY
Time hangs heavy on my mind this afternoon.
Sue Novak
opinion@kansan.com
Next to me on the coffee table is the pile of reading I need to do for my one three-hour class.
I spend time looking up sources on the Internet, I download and photocopy articles to read for class discussion or the research paper I'll need to write by December 5, I chase down sources listed in other sources . . . how do people find time for more than one class a semester?
From my perch I can see my pathetic lawn that needs to be de-thatched and reseeded in the next few weeks.
I marvel, at how other students take a full course load. I did it myself for many years, but how did I find the time?
This one course could consume every hour I'm not at work.
Where does one find the time?
A year doesn't seem like enough time to accomplish anything.
A year is so short. Sept. 11 was a year ago, and lives have changed, but what have I done with mine?
I have a theory about time and why it goes more quickly as we get older.
It's all about fractions. Take a fouryear old. She waits a year for her next birthday, and it seems to her like an eternity. And why shouldn't it? She has to wait through fully a fourth of the life she's already lived to get there.
With each year older we get, a year is a smaller and smaller chunk of the time we've already passed. No wonder time starts feeling like a runaway locomotive.
I remember, as a kid, hearing my dad say that the red mechanical pencil on his desk was one he had used in college 20 years earlier, and I was amazed that anything from such a faraway time and place
could still be working.
I thought of that stupid penel a few months ago as I snapped a padlock on my locker at the gym and realized I had purchased it my first day of seventh grade, back in 1969. The paint is worn off a bit around the third number of the combination, but it still works just fine.
When was the last time I vacuumed or dusted,or cleaned the litter boxes?
Neither of the dogs will go out in the yard in the rain — I'll probably need to walk them or else suffer the consequences later tonight in the back bedroom.
So much to do this weekend. How will I get it all done? What if I read my class assignment today and then can't remember some of it by Wednesday when we meet to discuss it?
God, my head is throbbing.
The rain keeps falling, and the clock keeps ticking, and I think about Bonnie Raitt's song in which she sings, "Life is mighty precious/When there's less of it to waste./We are scared./Scared to run out of time."
Damn her anyway.
I reach for some sinus tabs and the next article on the stack.
Novak is a Lawrence non-traditional student in journalism.
Reluctant war with Iraq is better than continued inaction
To war or not to war, that is the question. Based on the reception of Bush's recent speech to the United Nations, these first two questions seem to be subsiding a little. The case against Iraq is a litany of wrongs crying out for redress. Public opinion in Europe seems receptive to the idea of an invasion if accompanied by U.N. support, which American diplomatic efforts are now making look more likely.
But still, would an invasion be a good idea? I see two objections.
The only other idea I've heard involves resuming the weapons inspection process in Iraq. The problem with this is that it has already failed. During
First. war is an extreme course.
the 1990s, U.N. inspectors and Iraqi officials argued endlessly over what sites in Iraq were open to inspection; where they were allowed to go, the inspectors found nothing, until an Iraqi defector told them where to look.
Second, what happens if a war works? This raises the point that a new Iraqi government will need to be created after any successful invasion. Who knows what would happen in the region?
There is another consideration: the Iraqi people.
GUEST COMMENTARY
Currently they suffer the double affliction of Hussein's dictatorship and the U.N. sanctions. Lifting the sanctions while he is in power would allow him to utilize large quantities of oil money to
Joe Pull opinion@kansan.com
rebuild his army. It cannot be risked.
However, if Hussein was removed, the sanctions could be lifted. An invasion could end up killing many—but so would more years of the status quo.
A successful invasion followed by the lifting of sanctions and the installation of a government concerned with standard
To war or not to war is a wretched question; in this case no answer really satisfies.
However, the Hussein problem is not likely to solve itself, and as time passes it only grows stickier. Should we find ourselves debating Iraqi policy next September, our options are likely to be less attractive all around.
of living rather than weapons development would result in vast improvement in the average Iraqi's day-to-day life. That's worth something.
The fact that inaction during the past decade has not seen Hussein cause disaster except in his own territory is no guarantee of future safety.
I'm neither comfortable with nor completely convinced by the argument that an
An invasion has its advantages — if it goes right, both for the security of the world and for the well-being of the Iraqi people themselves.
invasion of Iraq is the best course of action.
That, of course, is a big if, but big its accompany inaction, as well. The lesser evil may be to assault the evil head-on, ending the immediate threat and trusting that resulting complications will be resolved when the time comes.
However, doing nothing seems even less satisfactory, and resuming weapons inspections would be futile.
Pull is a Colliax, N.D., senior in history and political science.