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Monday, September 28, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The garbage game
The game of Hot Potato works only if everyone plays by the rules. If a player puts his hands down to his sides, the game is pointless.
The radioactive waste site that will be determined by the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact Commission is a hot potato.
The teams Involved in the game are the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, and they are not being good sports.
The criteria for choosing the site are points of contention. Each state is proposing criteria that would send the dump to one of the others.
Representatives from Nebraska say the selection criterion that considers whether states now have disposal sites is unfair. Nebraska does not now have a disposal site.
No state is standing in line to volunteer to house hazardous waste, so all factors must be considered. It is not fair for anyone to have to live with nuclear waste, but the existence of nuclear power plants makes the disposal of low-level radioactive waste unavoidable. We cannot wish it away.
This decision already has been postponed for six and a half years.
It's a no-win situation. All must play fair. Like it or not, we're all involved.
Biding their time
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., has quite a way with words. It's too bad they are often not his own. Presidential Candidate Number Two has committed political suicide, and the public waits, anticipating the next skeleton to be dragged out of the closet.
Is this a test of public tolerance or just media muckraking? Investigative journalism can be controversial, but it seems that people are certain of one thing: A candidate's private life has a direct influence on his service in public office. The downfalls of both Gary Hart and Joe Biden illustrate the price of poor judgment and dishonesty — fatal character flaws when running for office.
People make mistakes they regret, yet they should be willing to own up to them, admitting they have learned something. In the unforgiving world of politics, candidates had better make sure they have a clean slate long before they enter the campaign spotlight.
Let's hope that candidates both present and future have learned from these mistakes. Nothing is sacred in the public eye; exaggerations, misstatements or speeches that are not one's own are sure ways to ruin a campaign.
In this democratic nation, the political field is designed to narrow, but there now should be a few wiser candidates playing. Who will be the next one cornered by his own past?
Deck the mall
In spite of the voters, the issue won't die.
City commissioners are once again dipping into coffers to cater to the requests of three separate mall developers.
Commissioners voted last week to dole out another $25,000 to hire consultants who will determine zoning changes necessary to build a suburban mall.
The voters snubbed a proposed downtown mall — not a suburban mall, which three developers are currently proposing. But voters don't vehemently oppose a mall, illustrated by the number of Douglas County shoppers who drive to Kansas City to shop at a mall.
But wait. There's more.
Voters denounced spending the money necessary to accommodate a mail - lighting, sewage, curbs and sidewalks.
And yet the city continues to pay for $25,000 studies instead of realizing the money can be better spent.
The downtown mall concept that voters killed has been resurrected by the Downtown Improvement Committee to haunt Lawrence residents. The committee also hired a consultant — with a $15,000 to $20,000 salary — to push for the opening of a downtown mall that would open before the nebulous suburban mall.
And where does the committee get much of its money? Why, from the Lawrence City Commission.
Are city commissioners starved for the type of entertainment that only a mall issue provides? Would a Dillards really make a difference? And can the city afford to allocate another $25,000 to pay for yet another zoning study?
And have commissioners considered telling the developers to pay for the studies, instead of the city continuing to foot the bill?
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
News staff
Jennifer Benjamin ... Editor
Juli Warren ... Managing editor
John Benner ... News editor
Beth Copeland ... Editorial editor
Sally Streff ... Campus editor
Sports editor
Dan Ruettmann ... Photo editor
Bill Skeet ... Graphics editor
Tom Eben ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Bonnie J. Hardy ... Business manager
Robert Hughes ... Advertising manager
Kelly Scherer ... Retail sales manager
Kurt Messersmith ... Campus sales manager
Greg Knipp ... Production manager
David Derftell ... National sales manager
Angela Orton ... Relationship
Ron Weems ... Director of marketing
Jeanne Hines ... Sales and marketing adviser
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Separate us,grad students cry
Against my better judgment, I am living in McCollum Hall this year.
I would have preferred to stay in my summer apartment, but because I am a graduate student with an assistantship on campus and a thesis to write, I moved back to McCollum. As much as I liked the peace and privacy of my apartment, I knew I wouldn't have time to cook and clean.
So far, it's been fairly quiet, despite the fact that there are freshmen living on floors that were once reserved for graduate students. But I'm not sure how long the quietness will last.
Last year, before coming to KU, I specifically asked to live in McCollum because the housing brochure described it as a graduate and upperclassman residence hall.
Imagine my surprise upon discovering that 800 freshmen lived there, and that only the top three floors were reserved for graduate students. Those of you who were at KU last year may remember the newspaper articles about McCollum Hall vandalism and noise.
I lived through it: from the trash cans and fire extinguishers that were thrown out of windows, to the loud lobby parties on Friday nights, when the noise would echo up the elevator shafts from fourth floor. And many still remember the food fight that underclassmen started two years ago.
My question is simple. why isn't there a reason students alone? Graduate students constitute
The University could make a small fortune by placing many of us in Joseph R. Pearson Hall, and keeping the hall open all year. Many stay on campus during the holidays, and they would save those with summer jobs in Lawrence the trouble to move back in August. There would be little upstart flooding bathrooms and other destructive practices aren't common among grad students.
approximately 30 percent of the KU student population. Most of us have been out of school for a number of years, and many are juggling part or full-time jobs in addition to studies. We need a quiet place to live, close to campus, where we can work on our degrees in peace.
One explanation I've heard for the lack of graduate-only housing is that most graduate students have moved out of University residence halls. But isn't the decrease of graduate students in these halls equal to the increase of undergraduates?
If anyone in the Office of Residential Programming has any bright ideas about mixing grad students with underclassmen and freshmen so that we can "set a good example," I've got news for them — I'm not paying $6,000 a year to babysit.
The underclassmen don't want us to police them. Graduate students are not fun to live with. They don't call the 10th floor of McColum Hall the "Graveyard Floor" for nothing. We study too much, work too hard, and are generally unpleasant people to be around, especially when we're trying to partier. We are not tolerant in the least of noisy parties. Even on weekends.
And underclassmen should be able to have some fun and crank their stereos occasionally without having to worry about some grouchy grads pounding on their door and telling them to shut up.
The trouble is that most grad students are just too busy to organize and lobby for a graduate residence hall, so housing officials will probably remain ignorant of how many unhappy residents they have and grad students will continue to be stuck in McCollum hall. Although most grad students are only here for two or three years, inappropriate housing can make a big impression on these soon-to-be alumni. And angry alumni don't donate money to KU.
ney is a New Castle, Ind., graduate student in journalism, and a con editor on the Kansas
No rubber stamp
attend Tuesday night's meeting, possibly too ashamed to show his face. I would be.
Frank Partny has been quoted and featured in the Kansan quite extensively in the past week — always dealing with the subject of the Student Senate and the Senate Finance Committee, the latter of which I am a member. His comments have been negative and possibly slanderous. His accusations against the committee stem from a meeting he did not stay for the entirety of. His assumption in each article that a unanimous vote is a rubber-stamp approval insults each bill's many merits. Maybe his attitude has something to do with the fact that he lost the election for committee chairman. He failed to
I personally invite Mr. Parttomy to stop insulting the finance committee and attempt to become a positive force on it. If he had bothered me, Tuesday night he would have witnessed at their hour session for one bill that narrowly passed, definitely not a rubber-stamp approval.
Chad Foster, Kansas City, Mo., freshman Good advice
Good advice
In defense of Brad Taylor's column on Sept. 91 would like to underscore the main point he was trying to address.
His column was not written to libel any one person or department as everyone seems to know him going to point out the fact that the current KU advising system is for the most part just a sick joke.
I challenge any professor to ask any freshman or sophomore class if it would describe its
advisers as people who "know the system intimately" and "know what pertinent advice to give" and "know how to involve puzzled students in charting their way forward."
If the system is as efficient and upstanding as Dr. Drayton would have you believe, then I propose that advisers take legal responsibility for the advice they give. In my relationship with the advising system I found that "carefully" trained advisers were more concerned with getting bodies into classes in their department than they were with the actual interest of the student. Do advisers work on salary or commission?
Yes, there is good help and good advice, but you have to know where to find it.
As for the freshmen who have been run through that sausage factory known as summer orientation, they would have settled for a bad schedule and maybe an extra year of school to have avoided the impersonal monster called "advising."
Brad Jordan, Ulysses fifth-year senior
katz
k.i. thorman
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathed
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