Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY Kansan
Published daily since 1912
4A
Spencer Duncan, Editor Lindsey Henry, Managing editor Andrea Albright, Managing editor Tom Eblen, General manager, news advisor
Sarah Schwinkersi, Business manager Brian Pagel, Retail sales manager Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
Wednesday, October 29, 1997
Examining
Centralized enrollment-hold center needs another chance to prove worth
For the last four semesters, KU students have clamored for a quick and easy way to deal with holds on their enrollment. Last semester, their calls were answered by a centralized enrollment-hold center. However, the center was not brought back this semester because of a lack of student interest. The center should still exist, and the reasoning behind removing the center is incorrect.
To pay holds, students must normally traverse the far reaches of campus. An enrollment-hold center near the enrollment center helped many students deal with normally time-consuming holds. Last semester, 457 stu
dents used the enrollment-hold center during enrollment.
The administration decided not to bring back the center because of lack of student interest. Four hundred and fifty-seven students is only 7 percent of the total number of students with holds on their enrollments. This was — for them — reason enough to abolish the center.
However, the enrollment center was scarcely publicized. Students who had hold on their enrollments when they enrolled often used the center. However, students who took care of their holds ahead of time usually did not, despite the fact that it was more convenient. More of an effort should have been made to
publicize the enrollment-hold center. *
Additionally, the one semester given to test the new program was not enough. A single enrollment period is not enough to gauge the usefulness of a program designed to help students. Maybe a year should be given to examine the enrollment-hold center, maybe more. In any case, one semester simply is not enough
While a 7 percent turn-out for a new program might seem small, it is hardly a good reason to abolish a program still in its infancy. The 457 students the center was able to help are more than enough reason to continue having an enrollment-center center and to make more of an effort to publicize it.
Gerry Doyle for the editorial board
Kansas doing well in gender equity
Amid the "Kansas City Star's" recent probe into the National Collegiate Athletics Association was an Oct. 9 article dealing with gender equity in NCAA-certified schools. Sadly enough, the focus of the article was to show that the NCAA basically ignores gender equity laws. The question is, does the University of Kansas?
The "Star" reported that the NCAA began a program in 1993 that required each Division I school to show progress in gender equity before gaining certification. Schools should be striving to meet Title IX stating that the percentage of men and women enrolled in sports at a university ought to be proportional to the percentage enrolled at the University.
Though the article shows how the NCAA's program remains ineffective and that schools' gender proportionality continues to be off-balance, the University has actually made progress in attempting to balance the scales.
Women make up 52 percent of the 305 NCAA Division I schools' enrollment, but account for only 37 percent of all athletes, 38 percent of student aid given to athletes, and 25 percent of athletic operating expenses, according to the "Star." At Kansas in 1996-7, women accounted for 50.2 percent of the enrollment and 44.8 percent of all athletes, 37.8 percent of student aid given to athletes, and 35.3 percent of athletic operating expenses.
According to Amy Perko, associate athletic director, these numbers have far from reached their peak. Perko said that women's rowing and soccer were added in 1995-96 in order to bring the University closer to the KUAC Athletic Board's goal of enhancing and creating opportunities for women without compromising the success of the existing men's or women's programs. Perko said that because rowing and soccer were new programs, the levels of participation and student aid have not yet
reached their peak. For example, the rowing team has 66 women on its squad, but a full team should have 65-95 women. Also, other sports have students who have no eligibility left but still receive athletic student aid. Thus as rowing and soccer programs age, the number of women athletes receiving athletic scholarships should increase.
At least the University is attempting to make progress. Kansas State was listed in the Star's article for having women totaling 46 percent of the student population and only 29 percent of the athletes.
The cost of a men's football team is hefty, but at least officials at our University are attempting to make progress toward equality. The two year-old women's rowing team recently traveled to Boston and competed in the world's largest regatta, showing Kansas women's athletics leading the national charge in both competition and opportunities.
Cody Simms for the editorial board
Kansan staff
News editors
Bradley Brooks . . . Editorial
Jason Strait . . . Editorial
Jodie Chester . . . Neus
Jen Smith. . . Neus
Adam Darby . . Neus
Charity Jeffries . . Online
Kristie Blasi . . Sports
Tommy Gallagher . Assocate Sports
Dave Morantz . Campus
Eric Weslander . Campus
Ashleigh Roberts . Features
Steve Puppe . Photo
Bryan Volk . Design, graphics
Mitch Lucas . Illustrations
Mark McMaster . Wire
Ann Marchand . Special sections
Lachelle Rhaodes . Neus clerk
Advertising managers
Matt Fisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assistant retail
Michael Soifer . . . . . . . . . . . . . Campus
Colleen Eager . . . . . . . . . . . . Regional
Anthony Migilazzo . . . . . . . . . National
Jeff Auslander . . . . . . . . . . Marketing
Chris Haghirian . . . . . . . . . Internet
Brian LeFevre . . . . . . . . Production
Jen Wallace . . . . . . . . . . Production
Dustin Skidgel . . . . . . . Promotions
Tyler Cook . . . . . . . . . . Creative
Annette Hoover . Public relations
Rachel O'Neill . Classified
Jaime Mann . Assistant classified
Marc Harrell . Senior account executive
Scott Swedlun . Senior account executive
Broaden your mind: Today's quote
“What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”
Thomas Riley Marshall
Letterers: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and home-town if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columnus: Should be double-
spaceed typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
How to submit letters and guest columns
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staufaer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions.
For any questions, call Bradley Brooks (brooks@kansan.com) or Jason Strait (jstrait@kansan.com) at 864-4810. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Raving
Overuse of acronyms becoming people's SOP
Our lives are getting longer. The tax code is getting longer. The string of information with which we must daily contend is growing maddeningly
daily content is grown longer. But some words are not.
These words are abbreviations, which our society of bureaucrats and technophiles is constantly coining to compress the long names of government programs, new technologies and the like. Whether we are driving in our SUV's (sport utility vehicle), ogling our paraparazzi pictures of BP's (beautiful people), or rejecting our decadent culture to
Jason Dawdy
opinion@kansan.com
become a BAV (born again virgin), we are in the presence of abbreviations.
Americans cannot escape the pithy phrases; like words, they can embody our preoccupations, prejudices and disagreements. From WASP to JAP, abbreviations are perhaps more American than we would like.
In its strictest sense, an abbreviation is not a word but a shortened form of one, a sort of nickname. That's why a dictionary like Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language enters "university" as a noun, but "univ" without any part of speech at all, because it is not a noun but an abbreviation of one.
Sometimes, however, your friend's nickname becomes so popular you begin to forget what his or her given name is, and abbreviations are no different. How many people, for instance, can say immediately what the acronym NATO really represents? In the case of NATO, the editors of Webster's have listed NATO as a noun, signifying that it is usually found in this form and can be thought of as a noun in its own right, not simply the first letters of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A hint here is that NATO is said not by repeating the letters, but by pronouncing it like any other word (NAYtow).
While that may sound objective enough, especially in theory, the summer I spent as an intern at "Webster's New World Dictionary" taught me that these distinctions often include an element of the arbitrary, and are sometimes even a little sneaky. Ideally, an editor will use citation files, clippings from printed media to determine whether an abbreviation deserves a part of speech label. An editor will help to clarify the situation where it is possible and in the
end is more concerned with providing you with a practical tool than with resolving every theoretical difficulty, which is as it should be.
In the case of abbreviations being used as verbs, it is a different matter. There is a trend in English, roughly parallel to that of forming verbs from existing nouns, of fashioning verbs from abbreviations. Most people, especially those who hate it for its colloquial qualities, perceive it as being a new trend, and largely it is.
But the roots of it stretch back more than a hundred years. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, we have been able to OK a document since at least 1888. Billy Crystal could have MC'd an event as early as the 1930s, and Merriam Webster's Dictionary attests that Mike Tyson could have KO'd an opponent in 1926, barring other temptations. But he would have needed to get his first knockout PDQ, or he might have missed his chance to TKO his opponent. Notice that PDQ is used as an adverb in the previous sentence, just as ASAP often is.
Most of the above uses are sanctioned by at least one major college dictionary, but there are many more that are still waiting for acceptance. A good example would be BS, which can be used both transitively and intransitively, as well as in a few social situations where the longer form could not.
Remember that words usually circulate in everyday speech and informal writing for a certain period of incubation before they break into printed material, so these dates are a bit conservative. In a few words, at least, this "new" trend has been common for decades. To RSVP appears in the Webster's New World citation files in 1976, both transitively and intransitively. Athletes not of the pugilistic persuasion might still be able to DH or they might get a chance to QB. Hopeful couples who feel they have tried everything are now being counseled to AI (artificially inseminate).
These abbreviations represent the ones to watch in the coming years; some of them will certainly begin to find their way into your writing and your dictionary, if they haven't already. I invite the reader to find further examples; you may mail them to me UPS. But in the meantime, I would caution against a rush to include these words in your next paper. There is always a discrepancy between the informal and the academic, and you wouldn't want to PO the hand that holds the red pen.
Dawdy is a Topeka senior in classical languages.
Feedback
Krishna cartoon insults religion
This letter is in response to your insensitive and disgusting portraitray of the Hare Krishnas in the Oct. 20 "Kansan." This amounts to bashing of the Hare Krishnas who preach nonviolence and moral responsibility as revealed by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (Song of God). The Bhagavad Gita shows the path to salvation by the practice of Yoga (communion with God). The Hare Krishnas have dedicated themselves to bring this teaching of the Lord everywhere for general awareness.
David Keith's abhorrent cartoon was insulting to the personal religious beliefs of many individuals, and it appears that you took the liberty perhaps because of the friendly and pacifist nature of the Hare Krishna followers.
Next time you are approached by a Hare Krishna you can politely refuse to oblige and go your own way.
Deb Chatterjee
Calcutta, India Ph.D. student
Pannirselvam Kanagaratnam Shah Alam, Malaysia, Ph.D. student
student
Promise Keepers are exclusionary
Your opinion piece in the Oct. 22 "Kansan" prompted me to "point out the repression" is the seven precepts that were described as those held by the Promise Keepers. I do not believe the Promise Keepers are repressive, but rather needlessly exclusionary and discriminatory. This naivete leaves them both open
Marc Adin
Unfortunately, you end your column by attacking those who do not agree with the Promise Keeper elements as members of the "drug, culture, free sex advocates and the alcohol industry." As a married, 50-year-old father and administrator a Kansas, I can assure you that even though I find the Promise Keeper's to be exclusionary and discriminatory, I do not represent any of the folks that you describe.
Of course, any cursory analysis of the seven elements that you described are either discriminatory/exclusionary against and of women, who cannot participate in the activities, and against any other religious group that may not adhere to a Christian religion. Finally, I do not know what a Promise Keeper definition is of "spiritual, ethical and sexual purity" is, but can only guess. I would appreciate a more specific description of what their versions of these elements are.
Director of human resources
Bulletin boards for expression
I am writing about your arti-
to charges of being repressive and discriminatory. Strict exclusionary and discriminatory movements often fall over the edge into being repressive because situationally that is the only mechanism available to enforce these strongly held precepts.
And that is the shame of it all. While trying to do good works, you betray the life and words of Christ by using dialogue that will only fan the flames of hatred and division amongst the diverse and cosmopolitan American people.
cle "Classroom Bulletin Boards no Place for Commercialism". There are two distinct issues here that I think you fail to distinguish: 1) proper use of bulletin boards inside classrooms and 2) proper use of public bulletin boards out in the hallways. "The Universalist" (whoever that is ... I couldn't find out) only covered the hallway bulletin boards, which does not seem to be a protest against the misuse of bulletin boards inside the classrooms. It is one thing to insist upon classroom space only being used for academic or university related purposes, but it is another thing to insist that public spaces be restricted to this.
This is a college campus that is supposed to allow for the free expression of ideas and encourage student involvement in extra-curricular activities. The hallway bulletin boards serve a useful purpose in allowing students to find out about organizational meetings, cultural opportunities as well as finding out where to buy dorm room furniture or finding a new roommate.
For "the Universalist" to put up signs that say "No Bulletins" on these public spaces amount to censorship. I do not see this as a joke at all. The fact that they chose the name universalist implies to me that whoever this is wants everyone to think alike, or perhaps not at all. For the universalist to take this matter into their own hands is a violation of free speech. There is no legitimate grounds for wanting to bannish all advertisements and flyers in a public space on a college campus. If the universalist has a beef with the misuse of classroom space, then that is a different issue.
Cathy Schwartz Western Civilization graduate student and instructor