4A the university daily kansan
opinion
tuesday,october7,2003
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Michelle Burhenn
Michelle Burhenn
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I just got shot at at Brothers. I just want to let you know that the new special on Saturday night is free shots of Puckers.
perspective
I would just like to say that Hash Hall smells funny.
俯
Did anybody else notice that there were three Jayhawks on Saturday Night Live this weekend?
If Arnold gets elected as governor for California and Bush gets re-elected next year, I'm moving to Canada.
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I just wanted to say that I agree that campus should be smoke free. Tobacco-smoke free.
Thanks again to the person who stole the stop sign from Jefferson Commons. I am so excited.
Why is it that the cleaning supply section of Target gets me excited? Really excited.
letter to the editor
Classified Staff ad untrue 'Kansan' should verify facts
I am writing to comment on the ad in Thursday's and Friday's editions of the Kansan. I assume that your ad policy does not include verifying the information in the advertisement. The advertisement was addressed to "Classified Staff" and paid for by the "Pro-Civil Service Coalition." The ad contains information that is simply not true.
The proposal for an alternative to civil service clearly states that longevity bonuses will continue and the goal is to increase the benefit of the bonus (including adding the bonus to the base salary, which the state currently does not do). The "Civil Service Merit System" (as referred to in the ad) historically has not been a merit-based system.
When funded, and with a satisfactory evaluation, you simply move up the pay matrix. But, the pay matrix has not been funded for the last three years! In addition, as stated in the proposal for an alternative to civil service, employees will not be "at will" employees and they can only be terminated with just cause as is the current practice. There will also continue to be an appeal system.
Could I place an ad in the newspaper saying that the proposal for an alternative to civil service will give all employees a 50 percent raise, double the number of holidays, and give bonuses twice a year? This also is not true, but I wonder if you will take my money and place the ad anyway!
Beverly Koerner is a classified employee of the University of Kansas.
reality check
Jennifer Wade for The University Daily Kensan
Myth of liberal media lies in ownership
COMMENTARY
On Thursday, I had the privilege of going to see Al Franken speak at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Mo. Ostensibly in town to discuss his smash book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken opened up a broad discussion of current political issues including the White House's reported CIA leak, the myth of the liberal media and Franken's heavily publicized showdown with Fox News commentator Bill O' — whoa, what was that last part about? That part about "the myth of the liberal media?"
Stephen Shupe opinion@kansan.com
We've all heard of the liberal media, but how closely have we examined it? What constitutes a liberal media?
The issue isn't easy. First we must agree that by "media" we mean mainstream media, such as national and cable news networks and widely circulated newspapers, the dot-coms, if you will. For a liberal mainstream media to ever exist, certain elements of the media as it is today would have to be abolished.
For one, the lapse of time that occurs before sensitive stories are critically analyzed would have to be shortened considerably. The most recent example of this trend is the White House's reported outing of a CIA operative.
which followed criticism from the agent's husband about the administration's use of intelligence to drum up support for the war in Iraq. That story appeared in a New York Times column by Robert Novak in July. Then it resurfaced nearly three months later.
But what about the argument that the media gives news stories a liberal spin in its reporting? According to Cal Thomas, a nationally syndicated conservative columnist, the mainstream media suffer from "acute denial syndrome," or ADS. Sufferers of ADS display symptoms of outward derision of all things conservative.
writing their paychecks. The media's dirty little secret is that it functions as a business. Its commercial interests are no more liberally or conservatively biased and no less corporately controlled than any other mainstream institution in a capitalist society.
What Thomas and other right-wing hawks such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh fail to mention is who's
So let's examine the idea of media ownership. Take ABC, home to selfdescribed liberal and nightly news anchor Peter Jennings. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company, which also owns ESPN, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, Hyperion Books and, lest we forget, Walt Disney World. Disney invested $16 million in lobbying for a recent Federal Communications Committee decision that would have given a single media conglomerate the power to own newspaper, television and radio stations that reach 45 percent of the population. The House and Senate struck down the decision and the ownership zenith remains at a whopping 35 percent.
answer to his boss. The same goes for journalists and their liberal ideologies. Their opinions mean nothing while the corporate initiatives of their superiors mean everything.
So what does cross-ownership mean for news content? The answer can be found on that classically American climb up the corporate ladder. If a junior executive votes Democrat in his private life, so be it, but he still has to
Consider the embedded journalists stationed in Iraq during the war. They spoke favorably of American soldiers on the air because the soldiers happened to be their life support at the moment. No wonder why they referred to the United States, the United Kingdom, a few thousand Australians and a handful of Eastern European countries threatened with having their military aid cut off as a "coalition." The same goes for mainstream journalists and their corporate owners. Only suicide cases cut off the supply line.
After dispelling the myth of the liberal media, Franken plugged his idea to create a liberal radio station. That'll be the day: A mainstream media outlet not owned by rich white men who love, above all things, the money this administration puts in their pockets.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism and associate editor of the opinion page.
perspective
Unreasonable admission standards at University would contradict principles of public education
Matthew Pirotte the editorial in the Sept. 29 edition of The University Daily Kansan both amused and stupefied me. In the editorial, "University needs higher admission standards," Pirotte claimed that we should be alarmed about the University of Kansas' lackluster performance in the Princeton Review rankings for public universities. He explained that our low ACT scores and low admissions requirements were the reason for our low ranking, and that we should set more stringent standards than the ones that were implemented recently.
However, I must pose this question: Why is a high rank in the Princeton Review such a desirable goal if it would force us to reject countless applicants from our home state? The editorial offered the following alternative for the masses of unqualified students: "The Regents don't have to abandon Kansas populism. That's what that purple place to the west is for."
Initially, I cringe at the thought of forcing unqualified students and possible friends of mine to suffer the agony of a school that seeks to refine cowboys and rodeo clowns. The goal for state public education should not be to
GUEST COMMENTARY
Jeremy Oborny
opinion@kansan.com
attract the most academically gifted students in the country. Our goal should be to provide an affordable, quality education for the residents of this state. A higher set of standards would unfairly discriminate against poor school districts and minorities. The issue is not that the University has freshmen with low ACT scores or grade point averages. The problem may be that the quality of education in Kansas high schools is lacking. If more than 75 percent of the campus is from Kansas, we should carefully assess who deserves the blame.
Many members of the education community erroneously assume that students with higher ACT scores, grade point averages or class rankings are an accurate measure for determining the
The two most important factors in evaluating our education are the quality of our instruction and the amount of funding that we receive. A greater problem facing the University is the pathetically low wages received by professors and graduate teaching assistants in comparison with other Big 12 Conference schools. How are we able combat this problem if the entire country is struggling in the midst of a recession? Furthermore, we must realize that more stringent standards might actually lower the number of admissions and reduce the funding for the University. This would only reduce the quality of education for everyone.
quality of education at the University. This is simply not the case.
Moreover, I would contend that the quality of instruction at the University is excellent. Despite the measly pay for GTAs and an inability to pay professors top-notch salaries, I felt that my education at the University rivaled any public or private school in the Midwest or the country. Our teachers do a good job. No matter where you go, most of the responsibility for education lies on your own shoulders; not the quality of the competition.
The reason that I chose the University was not because of rankings in the Princeton Review. Although I was accepted to USC, I chose to attend the University of Kansas because it's incredibly less expensive, it's close to my family and I love Lawrence. Whenever I desired to feel like an elite "Ivy Leaguer," I simply enrolled in honors classes.
When I entered the University in 1998, I had attained a cumulative 4.0 GPA in high school, a 30 on my ACT and I was co-valedictorian of my senior class. The reason why I am frustrated with the idea of more stringent requirements is certainly not because I wouldn't have made the cut.
The critical flaw in the case for raising requirements is the failure to explain how higher rankings in the Princeton Review or attracting "brighter" students would positively affect the University in any way besides elevating our prestige. Those who propose these standards never quantify how drastic these requirements would be, they overlook the potential disadvantages, they neglect the real problems at the University, and they completely ignore the fundamental principle of public education: To educate the public.
1
Oborny is a 2002 graduate in biology.