Opinion
Kansan
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Spencer Duncan, Editor Sarah Scherwinki, Business manager Lindsey Henry, Managing editor Brian Pagel, Retail sales manager Andrena Albright, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Justin Knapp, Technology coordinator
Thursday, Oct. 23, 1997
Steven Prince / KANSAN
Examining
New rules at Salvation Army will leave some homeless in the cold
It could be an ugly winter for the homeless population of Lawrence.
Kirk Schuetz, the new director of the Salvation Army shelter at 946 New Hampshire St., recently said he plans to enforce a set of tough-love rules at Lawrence's only overnight homeless shelter. Noble in theory, these rules will leave many of Lawrence's homeless sleeping in the cold.
Under the new rules, people will be turned away from the shelter if they have a blood-alcohol level higher than .08. Breath tests will be administered at the door. Schuetz also said he will turn people away if no proof exists that they have tried to get themselves off the street.
It is easy to see why Schuetz wants to enforce these rules. After all, why
should we offer help to people who do not seem to want to help themselves? However, denying people a warm place to sleep isn't the answer.
Schuetz said the idea behind the rules was to teach a person to fish, rather than just give him or her one. But turning people out on the streets is not teaching anyone anything. Perhaps offering drug treatment programs in conjunction with the new policies would justify the strict rules. But the Salvation Army — which certainly operates on a tight budget — is offering no solutions or alternatives.
In addition, enforcing a rule to turn people away who haven't tried to get off the street is ridiculous. How can this be checked? Who is going to take on the extra workload to find out?
Exactly how much effort is enough to earn a night at the Salvation Army?
Encouraging the homeless to take control of their lives is not an inhumane action. Making them sleep outside in sub-zero winter weather until they do is. It is not unreasonable to expect people staying in the shelter to act responsibly. However, spending a night in the cold is not going to make an alcoholic sober. It will probably just make them drink more.
The Salvation Army is the only overnight homeless shelter in Lawrence. Rules this strict in a town where there are no alternatives is unfair. It is better to have the homeless, be they drunk or unproductive, sleeping warmly in a shelter than it is to have them freezing to death on the streets.
Elizabeth Musser for the editorial board
Spirit of grade privacy alive, not used
Students' privacy is important. Students' lives, shortcomings, faults and grades should not be public knowledge. However, some violations of legislation designed to help foster student privacy should not trigger an overzealous response.
The Family Educational Rights to Privacy Act of 1974, also called the Buckley Amendment, protects students from having their grades posted with any kind of identification.
This law then means that no student is allowed to know another student's grade without permission. Thus, peer grading, posting grades by identification numbers (without student permission) and leaving graded work unattended for students to pick up are all violations of this amendment.
While students' privacy is important, the violations found at the University of Kansas hardly warrant a witch hunt for grade-revealing professors. Some students' graded work has been left unattended for them to pick up. Any student could then thumb through the graded work and see the grades his or her classmates had made.
many other students ID numbers do you know? With this in mind, professors that do this should not be weeded out and punished. The spirit of the legislation is still in place, and no harm is done.
Similarly, some professors post grades by students KU identification numbers without student permission. The intent of posting grades by ID numbers is to foster anonymity — how
With political correctness often running rampant and causing wrongful persecution, the stage is set for an upset individual to do serious damage to the faculty and staff of the University. A knee-jerk reaction must be avoided. While some students' grade anonymity might be questionable, the integrity of the University as a whole must be recognized by everyone before thoughtless, irreparable damage is done.
Gerry Doyle for the editorial board
Kansan staff
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Broaden your mind:
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
—Vladimir Nabokov, "Speak, Memory"
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All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stuuffer-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 (jstraht@kansan.com) at 864-4810. If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page stuff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Raving
Don't bother knockin' house parties not rockin'
R rock'n' roll ain't noise pollution but the Lawrence noise ordinance says it is.
I've seen police break up several parties in the name of this law, which in part reads:
No person shall participate in or be in any party or gathering of people from which sound emanates at a sufficient volume so as to disturb the peace, quiet or repose of the neighboring inhabitants of ordinary sensitivity.
Christopher Bulgren
poining@kansan.com
This seems a little broad to me. Aside from the vagueness of qualifiers like 'ordinary sensitivity,' I've seen this ord'
nance enforced in a very arbitrary manner.
nance enforced in a very arbitrary manner. Every person deserves the right to peace and quiet. However, there are some people who also need to cut loose after a long week of work and studying. I know that fighting for the right to party isn't exactly the gravest issue on everyone's mind, but there are other factors here.
First, a house party is a nice change of pace, especially if you're like me and can't stomach downtown Lawrence on the weekends. A house party also offers musicians another venue to play.
Since the loss of The Outhouse, The Crossing and The Hideaway as live-music venues, there are a fairly limited number of places (three or four) to see music in Lawrence. This doesn't bode well for musicians.
The existing live-music clubs do their best to give a variety of bands the chance to play. However, there's no way they can accommodate every musician.
So the logical decision is to showcase a band's music somewhere else — like a house party. Sure, it's not the same level of exposure as playing in a bar, but it' s exposure nonetheless. Furthermore, there are no snotty promoters or macho doormen to pinch the money.
House parties also give musicians and their fans musical freedoms they may not enjoy at a bar. For example, a group can
Let's also assume that some fans aren't 21 years old. At house parties, they can see a band and not be treated like second-class citizens. They also won't be shaken down for an extra $2 or $3 cover bars charge to recoup money these kids won't be spending on booze.
pick the opening band as opposed to playing at a bar with a bunch of musical flunkies that they and their fans hate.
One phone call from a neighbor and the party's over, folks. Cops show up and say, "If we have to come back here, someone's goin' to jail." This would certainly be an appropriate response on a Tuesday night. But on a weekend, it's ridiculous
Don't get me wrong. I like going to bars a great deal. But sometimes parties are just a lot more fun.
This also demonstrates the importance of inviting all your neighbors to the party. Furthermore, if you live near some old curmudgeons, I would warn them or even ask their permission. When preparing for a house party, there are appropriate actions to take that don't revolve around the law.
But the ordinance forbids any loud noises at any time. There's even a section that pinpoints the use of musical instruments as a violation of the code.
This ordinance needs to be more specific in responding to the needs of different people in this town. Maybe we could loosen the ordinance in certain circumstances. I think it's reasonable to let a party go until 2 a.m. on a weekend.
This is a college town. People come here to enjoy the best-four years of their lives. Permanent Lawrence residents and students can live in harmony without legislation that stifles artistic endeavors.
In addition, this is a Midwestern town with a great deal of musical talent and a shortage of venues to display that talent. This ordinance helps nullify an artistic venue. If there's nowhere to play the music, and no one's around to enjoy it, we are strangling Lawrence's rich tradition of live music.
Bulgren is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism. He is a member of the "Bubble Boys," a local band.
Closer look at student fee reveals its importance
E very mid-autumn, one of Student Senate's best kept secrets occurs without even a peep or a stir from
senators.
Usually during a mid-November meeting, the student body president steps before the Senate, seeking approval of more than $280,000 in student fee money to be spent on various work-study, financial aid and scholarship programs.
Senators glance blankly at the sheet and wonder, "Where did all this money come from and where's it going?"
Grey Montgomery
ponjino@anasea.com
I know. I was one of opinion@aarman.com those senators three years ago who sat and wondered but did not even know where to begin asking questions.
However, the clouds of mystery that surround this Senate project, more commonly known as the Educational Opportunity Fund. or EOF, may lift this year.
The fund is a $6 full-time student fee ($3 for part-time students) that was established in 1989 after the Kansas Board of Regents Students' Advisory Committee began demanding more money for financial aid, scholarships and work-study programs.
While I have always questioned why the students got stuck paying to improve our state's meager financial aid structure, I have never questioned the benefits of the program for students.
The fund's $6 fee is probably the greatest bargain students get from all the mandatory fees they pay. And this is the year the Student Senate, the Students' Advisory Committee and the Board of Regents need to re-examine state financial aid and the EOF fee to make increases in funds available for aid programs.
In fact, with the possible exception of a recreation center construction fee, there is no other fee out there that deserves more attention than the EOF fee.
Compare the EOF fee with our most overpriced fee, the Student Senate Activity Fee. Admittedly, about 90 percent of the activity fee is well-deserved funding that should remain: financing for Legal Services for Students, Hilltop Child Development Center scholarships, the University recycling program, Women's Transitional Care Services and the Center for Community Outreach.
There is another 10 percent, however, that is less justifiable. Much of this category comes from the Student Senate Unallocated Account. Probably about 90 percent of this money is passed with very little consideration from the Senate.
A lot of it is granted because senators take the opinion of "Oh well, the money is not going to do anyone any good just sitting in an account unspent." I have seen Senate and the finance committee fund $307 to groups that comprise five to 10 students and make no impact on the KU community as a whole. That's why I sought to cut the activity fee by $1 last year.
Meanwhile, the EOF committee members, a group of seven students and administrators who decide the allocation of the fee's revenue, pull their hair out every fall having to cut total requests by two-thirds to balance the EOF account.
And this isn't for five to 10 students sitting around talking about life and needing Senate funding for mailers to discuss life with other prospective life discussers.
This is for people who are struggling every day to get through school. These are the people who work at diners and read a little Chaucer for Western Civilization whenever a free moment arises. These are the mothers who have children to take care of, but not enough money for tuition and child care costs.
And we throw money around like its nothing for groups that do little, while we deny two-thirds of the funding requests for groups such as need-based child care grants, recycling work-study employment, emergency grants and minority retention programing.
I do not want to even suggest that by increasing the EOF fee by $2 that the problem will be solved — an extra $90,000 can get spread around only so far.
Second, any increases in this fee should not be taken lightly. This fee provides a service that the state should be providing, not the students. What I do suggest is that the Senate and the Students' Advisory Committee need to begin to push proposals that would increase financial aid funding and that among those things that should be considered is an increase in the EOF fee.
And if student leaders are worried about the potential for increasing total student fees, then cut the Senate activity fee.
Some positive steps already have been taken by the Regents. The Regents' tuition and budget development committee proposed last week to include a $500,000 increase in the Regents' request for the Kansas Supplemental Grant Program, a state financial aid program. I applaud the committee for this proposal.
I hope that our state and students leaders do not stop there. Even $500,000 gets spread around slx universities pretty quickly.
Montgomery is a Junction City senior in journalism and political science. He was student body president last year.