4A the university daily kansan
opinion
friday, october 3, 2003
sack's view
Steve Sack / Knight Ridder
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Oh, cottage cheese. Oh, cottage cheese. Why is thee so heavenly? Why is thee so good to me? Oh, cottage cheese, how I love thee.
Sometimes I wish I were in a sorority, and then I realize that I am not generic enough to be in one.
Protest the protest, and step your local hippie.
Santa, can you hear me? I have been so good this year.
perspective
Following as important as leading
Hey there, future leaders of America. That's right, I'm talking to you. Look at you, that glint of hope in your eye, bag o' knowledge slung over your shoulder, with a bright shining future. You're pretty lucky, blessed even, because into your hands the hopes and fears of this country have been placed, and it's up to you to sculpt that into a better tomorrow. I'm just glad I get to stand behind you while you do it, and maybe get you a nice, cool glass of lemonade whenever you get thirsty, or perhaps a nice shoulder rub. Because, leaders of tomorrow, I'm your follower. In exchange, I don't ask for much, just that you make all the decisions and that I don't ever have to think outside of the box. Just let me use the trail you blaze as a road map to a destination that I really don't care about.
GUEST COMMENTARY
I know what you're thinking: "That's kind of pathetic" or "What a loser." Well, I'll have you know that being a follower is an honorable position, one with a rich history and tradition, that actually predates both agriculture and prostitution and requires only half the effort of each.
Adam Lott opinion@kansan.com
Allow me to enlighten you, but then right afterward you're going to have to go right back to showing ME the way.
Deal? For now, let's have a little education about those who have the best view of the back of your head: the followers.
In nature, there are universal maxims to which we are all bound. Some were meant to follow, no whether you prescribe to the theory that we were all created by some supreme deity in his or her image, spawned through billions of years of cosmic build-up or just through pure zippity-do-dah luck.
Followers don't really worry about such a conundrum. We just know that since the beginning of existence, there was a lead to follow.
If not for followers, who would have followed that first caveman across the Bering Strait? If not for followers, we would not have the Catholic Church or,
for that matter, Lutherans. The inspirational words of thousands of leaders would, instead of falling onto deaf ears, fall onto no ears at all.
Who defines a leader more than the people who stand behind him? Wars have never been fought by leaders, just a series of followers, following. There have been followers in every great war and every memorable battle. Would San Juan Hill be remembered so much if Roosevelt had just walked up there by himself? Followers have shaped world events not by changing the world, but by working with those changes and going with the flow.
How are you doing, buddy? Can I get you anything? That lemonade sound good yet? How about that back rub? I don't mind, and neither should you, because you're a leader and I'm your follower. I'll gladly grip onto your coat tails and trust you to take me wherever your natural leadership abilities will go. Because you're my leader and, me, well, I'm a follower. And between the two of us, we're going to make history.
Lott is a Garden City sophomore in creative writing with a minor in theater and film.
perspective
University must re-evaluate 'Killer Coke' campus
In the midst of our self-proclaimed "war on terror," it appears that U.S. companies in Colombia (South America, silly, not the land of Anthony Peeler and Jason Sutherland) are literally getting away with murder. At the forefront of these largely unreported crimes against humanity is the supplier of the University of Kansas' official soft drink.
COMMENTARY
University officials failed to make students aware of Coca-Cola's ties to terrorism when they entered into a 10-year agreement with the soda-pop giant in 1997. The same corporation that has successfully cornered the bottled-water market (Dasani, Dannon and Evian) is now starting another kind of monopoly in Colombia. Instead of yellow $100 bills and the rights to Park Place, the game Coke is playing in South America involves knocking off pesky union leaders in order to maintain a hold in a dangerously poor country run by military warlords.
The largest and most brutal paramilitary organization in Colombia, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated a "terrorist organization" by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. This means that any person providing financial or material support to the AUC is in violation of U.S. law. This has not stopped Coca-Cola
Ben McCarthy opinion@kansan.com
bottler Pan American Beverages (Panamco) from providing support to the AUC, which then murders and tortures trade union leaders seeking to represent workers at company facilities in Colombia.
The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steel Workers of America Union (USWA) have brought lawsuits under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) against Coca-Cola, seeking to stop their complicity with the terrorist AUC. The court has acknowledged links between the Colombian State and paramilitary groups, as it is common knowledge that paramilitaries exist at the pleasure of the U.S. government.
One of the primary targets of Coca-Cola's merciless attacks is SINAL TRAINAL, Colombia's food and beverage industry union. In the latest of a string of criminal actions against SINAL TRAINAL, organizers report members have been confined in plants and hotels and held until they surrender their work contract in an attempt by Coca-Cola to close plants and substitute them with distribution centers. On Sept. 10, the 15-year-old son of a unionist was taken hostage as he was riding his bicycle and tortured.
SINAL TRAINAL has sued Coca-Cola in U.S. courts for its longstanding policies of physical threats, intimidation, displacement, imprisonment, mass layoffs and even assassination of union leaders. According to the lawsuit, filed in Florida's Federal District Court, employees at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Colombia that do choose to show allegiance to their union realize that doing so "is like carrying a tombstone on your back."
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez, with the approval of the Bush Administration, is putting in place an ultra-repressive system for the benefit of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, poverty in Colombia is reaching catastrophic proportions, affecting more than $60\%$ of the population.
tional (cough...American...cough) corporations is completely sheltered from their actions seen around the world. The off-shore dealings of corporations such as Coca-Cola do not exactly endear us to countries constantly being reminded of our supposed efforts to stop terrorism. The CEOs of Coke and other "transnational" corporations do not oversee company operations in the middle of nowhere. Company policy is drawn up and set into motion right here at home, where the fight is supposed to be against terrorism.
Being an active, full-time student at the University means that your bank account will eventually cross paths with one of the many beverages Coke has waiting for you around campus. The time has come for University officials to re-evaluate their contract with a company that banks on a product that human rights activists such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark refer to as "Killer Coke." Without immediate action, students will continue to be complicit participants in a human rights tragedy for the remainder of the University's deal with a soft drink devil.
Our view of these shifty, transna-
McCarthy is a Lennexa nontraditional student.
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editorial board
Top 25 will mean setting gold standards
Chancellor Robert Hemenway's goal to make the University of Kansas a top-25 university in U.S. World Report has become an often-criticized — yet entirely necessary — admission that Lawrence is squandering the opportunity to become a top-notch school. But the simple acknowledgement of how much potential the University has yet to capitalize on is a requisite first step to placing within the top 25.
Hemenway has an interesting insight on how to side-step the admissions problem: Push for more rigorous schools within the University. A number of standout programs at the University suggest the wider promise of this approach.
Instead of supporting an afterthought honors program, the University should set out to create a new segment of the University with an exclusive focus of matching the top programs in the nation. It would enforce outstanding admission and academic standards, entertain a core curriculum beyond that of typical general-education requirements and form the base of an intellectual community that could transform the University's academics. There's no doubt that Lawrence is fertile ground for this type of renaissance. It could form the beginnings of a new intellectual community.
Last December, in his Monday Message via e-mail to employees of the University, Hemenway wrote that, in recent years, public assistance to the University has steadily declined, faculty salaries have reached new lows and student appropriations have become the second lowest in the Big 12 Conference. This acknowledgment came not more than two months after calling for the University to become a top-25 University. It is difficult to understand what kind of progress the University can hope to accomplish in such a hostile climate.
Second, we're in Kansas, and the University's old name, "Harvard of the Midwest" or "Harvard on the Kaw," has become so cliché by now it's time for any school that's serious about that goal to drop the slogan. People who want Harvard find their way to Boston.
Hemenway's goal of top-25 status doesn't have to be just a goal. It can become reality when we cease to pander to populism and unapologetically raise the bar.
In order to reach that future, we have to recognize a number of restraints. First, a feature that Hemenway credits to Kansas populism is our admission standards. They are, and will always remain, behind the "best" schools. Unlike University of California-Berkeley, we don't have UCLA, UCSD, UCSC and a host of other high-ranking schools across the state to divert prospective students. As for private schools, it's easy to get the impression they enjoy rejecting applicants.
But one is left with the impression that there is a segment of administrators, students and faculty who know the University's academic programs are full of possibility. And we can achieve that partly by creating more rigorous academic programs within the University.
Greg Hoolmquist for the sditorial board
**Greg Hoolmquist for the sditorial board**