Opinion
University Daily Kansan, September 1, 1982
Page 4
A change in good faith
When a group of graduate and teaching assistants met last night to discuss the unilateral revision of their contracts, two avenues of action were proposed. The first was to go on strike against the University. The second was to form a committee.
They chose the latter.
It is a tradition at KU to form a committee when confronted with a problem, but this situation calls for immediate attention.
This summer, the office of academic affairs added an 88-word clause that said any GA or TA could be fired — provided that they got 30 days' notice — if the University faced budget problems. That change was made without discussion and without notification, but Deanell Tacha, vice chancellor for academic affairs, told the Graduate Student Council this week that the change was made in "good faith."
Tacha said the graduate students were not consulted because the administration was trying to get the contracts finished as
soon as possible. But that was no reason not to include them in the process. A change in good faith means at least finding the time to discuss the issue with all those concerned.
The result, however, remains the same. The job security of GAs and TAs now is in question, especially in light of current budget constraints.
The issue, if given to a committee to study, might get lost in a maze of red tape the entire semester. It may be appropriate for a committee to draw up a specific proposal later on, but for now, the GAs and TAs must keep constant pressure on the administration to change the contracts.
Harland Prechel, a graduate student in the sociology department, said at last night's meeting that not taking immediate action would allow the administration to do whatever it wanted.
When good faith takes a back seat to expediency, that contention seems to be correct.
Improved advising promises more personalized attention
Quick! Do you know who your adviser is?
Chances are you don't, and the University of Iowa is one. You should ask your adviser.
For years advising at KU has meant going to find the person whose name is listed on a student records folder and having him sign an enrollment card. Often, this allowed students to take classes they shouldn't have (Remember that class you failed because it was several semesters too advanced?) or gave students and advisers little time to work out a plan that would help those students get more out of their university education.
Now, the office of academic affairs has put together some plans, soon to go into action, to
CATHERINE BEHAN
help KU students get more out of their tuition dollars.
No longer will students be able to "self advise" – or sign their own cards. now all we will have to meet with an adviser at least once each semester. Rand Dubnick, new coordinator for academic advising, hopes some students will get together with their adviser even more often.
e. g. When most students need, she says — and I agree — is someone who knows them well enough that they can go to this adviser with any problem concerning a teacher or a course. The adviser would be a mentor, to help the student take the right courses, at the right time, and to send him to the right place if he was having trouble in a class.
With the new computer pre-enrollment in effect this spring, advising will be easier to arrange because there will be more time to talk to advisers — several weeks in fact.
Duback spent the summer months recruiting the many more advisers who will be needed to handle the hordes of students who will need advising, some for the first time. She said she would like to see advisers responsible for an average of 20 advises.
One of the biggest problems in organizing a good advising program at KU has been the low number of faculty who are eager to advise. However, Dubnick said she received few refusals from faculty members to be advisers and that they did not have time to devote to the students this semester. Many faculty members said they would be willing to advise students in the future.
Another significant problem with the past advising system had been the lack of information advisers had about other subjects or majors. This made things difficult for the student who was undecided or who eventually changed his mind about his major.
And Dunbuck a solution for that too -- advisers now go to briefing sessions to help them
learn about other departments and their requirements. "Co-advisors" will be available for freshman and sophomore students who intend to go into professional schools such as the School of Business, the School of Journalism or the School of Education as juniets. These co-advisors will be able to help the students, along with their liberal arts advisers, and guide the students to courses that would prepare them for or complement their major fields.
How many times have you taken a class you didn't want to, done poorly in it and then found it better?
Unfortunately, some things will not change. If a student plans to enter a professional school when he is a junior, he still must fulfill the freshman-sophomore requirements for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which can advantage to some and an advantage to others.
Advisers will probably get notes from teachers of classes that their student advises are not doing well in – which in turn could prompt a phone call from one's adviser to discuss the problem. It might be a little more difficult to show the teacher a class when a note to your adviser hangs on it.
But on the plus side, someone will be watching out for you. So, if you just cannot understand the Spanish homework and are at a loss as to what to do, please help me with it, or help, to help, or refer you to someone else who can.
Dubuick said that advisers would get "no direct monetary reward," but that, by being faculty members, they would receive a more indirect payment. For example, guiding students through their college careers.
Dublink is now setting up an advising center that will have material from all the schools and various departments to help students get more information about their choices at KU. She said she would be co-advisors on duty at the center to answer questions or give referrals to other services.
At first glance, most of the changes that academic affairs is making in the advising system seems more trouble than it is worth. But with the changes, maybe students will get to know their advisers, be able to talk to them, work with them, and, in the end, learn more.
With the extra time advisers will have for their advises, they should be able to tell students which courses would be best to drop, which ones should be attended and which classes would be a waste of time.
Advisers should be more to students than just the people whose offices are packed in August and January and empty the rest of the year. They should be faculty who can really help students.
All of this seems as though it might be just one more stumbling block on the long road to graduation, in the end, these new ideas should help students walk down the hill with a lot more ease and a lot more information under their caps.
THE DETROIT PRESS PRINTING
GROUP BY THE DETROIT COMPANY
The latest in corporate fringe benefits—monogrammed coke
High society getting higher
We don't worry about the things that we used to be.
We're highly respected in society.
We're talking heroin with the president,
There's not a problem solved that it can't be
— Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Drugs are damn close to being respectable. Doing drugs is sort of like having a closet of Poles, a Porsche and a personalized license plate. It means something if you can tell the person siting next to you in class that you spend $10,000 of your parents' money on coke each
Actually it's not enough to do drugs anymore. You have to screw up your life in the process. Sometimes, after reading the paper and finding out who just got busted for cocaine, I half-expect Ronald Reagan to go on nationwide television and tell the whole country that he has a $1,000-a day habitat, so the economy will have to wait until he gets out of a rehabilitation institute.
"Yeah, well, I went down to this rehabilitation center in Arizona for a couple of months and had
I told him I didn't know he had any drug problems.
"Naw, I don't do drugs that much, but I figured I've been enough to tennis camps and I've already been to Europe, so why not this place? Every time I watch the news, somebody else is getting out of one of these places, so it's got to be the place to be."
Bert checked his hair and asked me whether I knew that Stanford accepted only one out of
every 10 applicants to its graduate school of business. Then he told me some more about the
"This place was awesome! For 12,000 bucks i got to use the whirlpool and the tennis courts and the meals there were excellent. And the people there! Only the best. You know who I ate lunch with the first day? The San Diego Chargers' offensive line. You think that's something, hell, my encounter group had half the People magazine covers for the last year in
Bert turned around to see whether the ranchett court was open yet, then turned back
TOM GRESS
and asked me whether I thought he should go to work first, then apply to Harvard Business School.
"You know, maybe I should work first, get some money and get a Ferrari or something,"
"you have to be quick."
Then Bert told me who he jogged with at the rehab center.
"Pete Townshend and Andy Gibb, that's who. You know, I always thought that music guys were really strange, but these guys were decent."
Finally, Bert's raquette court opened up. So he told me that he would see me at the bars later.
When I got to KU four years ago, I formulated this hypothesis about drugs being just another drug. It is that they are *unused* in KU.
that some guys in the frat system liked to unwind with something more than a can of Coors; this being an absolute shock to me, because I thought the only people who did drugs in college anymore were holdover graduate students from the '60s. Certainly not guys we'd dressed snappy and talked about going to law and med school after college.
What's more, I'll never forget when the president of my fraternity told me that even some sorority girls smoked dope. Well, if these social arab们 were into the stuff, I knew it was just murder or murder of them. I had no interest in murdered Walter Cronekite has been giving the news higher than a 747.
My hypothesis gained some more strength a little later, when the rest of the world discovered that many nice, respectable people liked to sit around after work and smoke dope or snorkeck. Pretty soon, Time magazine started doing cover stories on cocaine. Its reporters would write about some lawyer's ad hominem, a fondable kid's and a bubble habit costing a couple thousand a week.
That isn't what my parents, the government and my doctor told me would happen if I did drugs. No sir, if I did drugs I'd be robbing liquor stores instead of preparing briefs to support my habit. I'd be laying out in a frozen street with a needle in my veins, they told me, instead of rolling up $100 bills and looking for a pocket mirror.
So I had my hypothesis, but I was still confused. Until I talked with Bert.
Then I realized that you've got to screw up your life on drugs, go to a rehabilitation institute for a few months, then tell the rest of the world how bad it is, and before you can count yourself among the elite.
Then maybe that Porsche will mean something.
Letters to the Editor
Ad graphic shows poor taste
To the Editor:
Graphics in advertising serve to give an added dimension to the text. To prompt the reader with an image associated with the subject can heighten the effect of the advertisement.
However, when the image is not appropriate and falsely represents the concern of the advertisement, damage has been done. Such an instance occurred last Friday in an audition advertisement for the University Dance Company.
No graphic was submitted or requested, yet a University Daily Kanan staff member decided to include one of his or her own choice. A candidate received the artistic intent of this performance group.
While I would hope that this action by one individual was only a momentary lapse in judgment and good taste, I certainly hope that the advertising staff will respect the judgment of their clients. No one wants to be publicly insulted.
Selecting this frivolous graphic was an insult to the organization and certainly did not help to explain why.
Janet Hamilton
Associate Professor of Dance
University Dance Company
Janet Hamburg
Story's errors foolish
To the Editor:
*Pitfall! That's the best word to describe the sacrifice of the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage*
First, a walk from Washington, D.C., to the East Coast does not take one through Kansas. A
walk from Washington state to the East Coast does, though. Does the editor know that?
Also, the reporter and the editor — as well as every other American — should be acutely aware that the new Trident submarine in Bangor, Washington (the state), not in Maine.
If we are to be at all serious in our opposition to the destruction of the world, we should at least
Having joined with these marvelously dedicated people when they marched through Seattle in April, I can assure Kansans that the danger is real (remember the hundreds of nuclear missiles spread throughout Kansas) and that these people are serious in their mission. They deserve serious attention and serious coverage. Good try, though, eh?
Bob Tozer
Bob Tozer
Topeka law student
Flint merits memorial
Karen Schlueter
To the Editor
It's a shame that the same chord did not ring true with the faculty members who proposed the name change. They are in the best position to understand that there are precious few memoirs to those who choose to serve the profession, not as Oscar Starriller did, but as Leon Flint did, and not as Michael Joyner, who espouses competence and integrity in new journalists through his work as a teacher.
Tracee Hamilton's column (Aug. 30 Kansas) opposing the renaming of Flint Hall struck a responsive chord with this graduate of the School of Journalism.
Overland Park law student
The University Daily KANSAN
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newroom - 864-4310
Business Office - 864-4358
(USPS) 659-640) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday during June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holiday. See letters in the back. Mail enclosed by mail are $13 for six months or $27 a year in Douglas County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester, paid by mail.
P邮填师: Send change of address to the University
Daily Kauai. Find Hall, The University of Kauai,
Lawrenceville.
Editor Business Manager
George Gene Susan Cookey
Managing Editor Steve Rebekah
Editorial Manager Keenan Woolley
Campus Editor Mark Zieman
Campus Editor Marlene Kramer
Museum Editorial Manager Colleen Caye Ann Lloyd
Assistant Campus Editors Colleen Caye Ann Lloyd
Sports Editor Gina Strippie
Sports Editor Matt Stern
Entertainment Editor Annie Wylie
Production Manager Beverly Kogel
Wire Editors Jan Boultz Earl Schlitz
Wire Editors Jan Boultz Earl Schlitz
Chief Photographer Anne Calvillo, Cathy Bush
Photographer David Hewickbach
Head Copy Coach Steven Mockler, Den Delphia
Copy Chief Tom Sham, Paula Crawford
Colleensha Tom Behan, Tom Green,
Lisa Gualertrez, Tracee Hamilton
Artista Rosemary Hesman, Bill Willy
Retail Sales Manager Barb Haim
Retail Manager Jan Haim
Sales Manager Matthew Langan
Classified Manager Laurie Samelson
Manager Barbara Sampson
Staff Artist/Photo Journalist Tom Heiding
Tourneaux Manager Mike Bangberg
Paul Jase
General Manager and News Advisor ... Paul Jee
Advertising Advisor ... John Oleapan
}