Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Spencer Duncan, Editor Sarah Scherwinski, Business manager Lindsey Henry, Managing editor Brian Pagel, Retail sales manager Andrea Albright, Managing advisor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser Justin Knapp, Technology coordinator
Tuesday, September 30, 1997
David Keith / KANSAN
Examining
GTAs voting for better treatment
In the past few years, KU Graduate Teaching Assistants unionized and fought for benefits from the University of Kansas with an utter lack of substantial results.
They now have the opportunity to vote as a group on whether to accept the benefits of a new contract.
The GTAs are turning their eyes toward the state level, rallying for support from their actual employers.
The controversy whether GTAs should be considered state employees or students has resurfaced and led to a re-evaluation by the state, the University and GTAs concerning the amount and type of benefits the group deserves and who should dish out the funds.
The debate about GTA benefits originates in the GTA Coalition. It then moves to Chancellor Robert Hemenway, through the Board of Regents and finally to the State Department of Administration. The contract now under negotiation includes provisions for health care,
wage increases, full tuition remission,
grievance procedure and fee waivers.
But these issues are nothing new. Recent action by the coalition includes a rally last fall and discussions with the University last year yielding a tentative agreement stating that the University would request funds from the state to cover a portion of GTA health care.
A 1994 ruling by the Kansas Public Employee Review Board (PERB) marked another important but controversial aspect of the GTA debate. The board determined that GTAs were primarily considered state employees, not students.
A focus on the reviews board's decision lends itself to the argument that because GTAs are state employees, they should receive the same benefits legally afforded all other state employees.
In addition, despite the fact that the state as an institution provides its employees benefits, almost all private and public employers across the nation provide health care coverage for their
employees.
Discrepancies are apparent on the University level. In 1995, KU employees, excluding GTAs, received a 3.5 percent pay raise. The University continues to shun GTA issues while state universities across the nation have recognized that the work of GTAs closely parallels that of professors, and thus have provided them with similar benefits.
Coalition members will vote today on ratification of the three-year binding contract. A two-thirds majority is necessary for ratification and subsequent consideration by the University, the Board of Regents and the State.
The University has already agreed to pay for some amount of GTA health care even if the legislature votes not to appropriate funds.
However, GTA status in comparison to other state employees in Kansas and national standards of state and university health care coverage should warrant state-level benefits for GTAs.
Nadia Mustafa for the editorial board
Appealing tickets is a tough process
While parking tickets are being given out with abandon, students are finding the appeal process to be nearly futile.
To appeal a ticket, a student has two options: write an appeal in essay form and turn it in to the parking department or go to court.
The most popular option is to turn in a brief essay stating why the student feels the ticket is not valid. It is then looked at by a panel of judges on the traffic court and the student is notified in approximately four to six weeks of the decision.
Therefore, a student must decide to wait nearly two months to find out if his or her appeal was one of the chosen few, or pay the ticket. The judges are
second- and third-year law students who use the appeals as practice.
If a student wants more than just a essay to protest, they may opt for a trial. In the case of a trial, the student is represented by a law student and the case is held before a court of other law students acting as lawyers and judges.
This process is long and not successful. Out of the 1,959 appeals heard in during the 1996-1997 year, 728 were approved. In most of these cases, the appeal was granted due to a ticketing error such as an obscure sign, construction, unclear lines, etc.
would have made money from their own mistake. All money made from parking tickets stays within the parking department and is used for parking lot upkeep, salaries, snow removal and other forms of upkeep.
Last year the parking department generated $607,724 from tickets alone. That figure does not include the fees for buying a permit. With the ever-present parking problem, it is hard enough to find a space much less go to trial for it.
If a student that was faulted for one of these errors and did not appeal an erroneous ticket, the parking department
Of course, the parking department cannot base its decisions for appeals on whether the parking situation is horrid, but the process of appealing can be lengthy and unsuccessful.
Kansan staff
Cathy Pierce for the editorial board
Bradley Brooks . . . Editorial
Jason Strait . . . Editorial
Jodie Chester . . . News
Jen Smith. . . News
Adam Darby . . . News
Charity Jeffries . . Online
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Tommy Gallagher . Associate Sports
Dave Morantz . Campus
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Ashleigh Roberts . Features
Steve Puppe . Photo
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Mark McMaster . Wire
Ann Marchand . Special sections
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Broadon your mind: Today's quote
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."
Jean Rousseau, "Du Contrat Social"
**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.
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Raving
Sex and the sinister reputation of cloning
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stuaffer-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.
Every so often you have probably wondered why you want to have sex. Everyone says it's so dangerous these days that you might think it's as bad as smoking. Then
there is the matter of pregnancy and birth control, not to mention all the arcane secrets you have to learn "on the fly." But I bet you still want to have sex, damn the torpedoes and any other phallic reference.
Joe Suber opinion@kansan.com
We want sex because it is the primary instruction in our genetic programming. We are like the "Terminator," looking down a list of priorities and checking them off until they are done:
kill Sarah Connor, have sex, kill John Connor,
have sex, recharge batteries, have sex
Unless you believe in hocus-pocus or Sunday school, that is the primary purpose of all biological life.
It doesn't have to be that wav.
Our species could simply bud off into exact duplicates, like certain shrimp and snails (but not puppy-dog tails). Then we could crawl around waiting for the first natural disaster or disease to wipe us out.
Sex is the best way that nature could think up to allow enough differences within a species so that the species could survive in hostile, changing environments. Out of sex, natural selection, and a few million years, came a survival tool for all hostile environments: our big brain.
Sure, the brain goes haywire every once in a while, but there have been a lot of great men and women who make the most of the thing.
A few examples are the British researchers who figured out how to take the cells from the udder of a sheep and make an exact genetic duplicate, otherwise known as a clone. This has excited scientists, but it has excited even more Luddites who don't understand the great opportunity that the continued development of cloning and its application to humans hold.
In fact, the womb that the clone is in will be chemically different than the womb that held the evil billionaire, making small changes from the start that will make the clone very different. Cloning people in real life just doesn't work like it does in the comic books or even in Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World."
There seems to be widespread agreement in the popular media that cloning humans would be a bad idea. Always following the polls, President Clinton has banned federal funding of human clone research.
Very often the opponents of cloning don't seem to know what the technical reality of cloning is. A clone of anything needs to gestate in a womb, be born as a baby and raised to adulthood. A human clone would be a person in every way. A human clone would not necessarily share the same tastes or ambitions as the hypothetical evil billionaire who has himself cloned in a bid for immortality.
What the cloning of humans can do for humankind is truly revolutionary. We know from studies of identical twins (who have the same genetic code) that the greater part of our potential intelligence and physical make-up is the result of the genes we inherit. Personalities may differ among clones, but if we cloned an Albert Einstein or a Michael Jordan, we would be giving the clone and humanity some very special gifts.
This is the beauty of cloning—it allows our big brains to take some control of the evolution of human kind by choosing the genes that we like. In the long run, cloning, (with lots of sex for good measure) would allow us to artificially raise the level of intelligence and health, without all the nastiness of eugenics. All the while clones would provide humanity with a few more of the great minds that drive our Western conception of progress.
Why are we programmed to have sex? It gives us the best odds for survival. Cloning of humans is simply a way to improve the odds.
Feedback
I want to respond to three recent editorials concerning East Timor, Phillips Petroleum Co. and the University. This serious and complex issue should not be trivialized as a mere "gripe" (William Dietz, letter to the "Kansan," Sept. 11, 1997), nor presented without sufficient evidence (Matthew Caldwell, column in the "Kansan," Sept. 10, 1997). Most importantly, "unfair criticism" should be refuted with clear facts and not passed off with half-truths (Rob Phillips, letter to the "Kansan," Sept. 12, 1997).
Letter seeks to clear Phillips' fog
Because of space constraints, I cannot deal adequately with every detail, but what follows should speak for itself without doing violence to the documentary record. All sources are listed in parentheses to avoid claims that I have fabricated anything. Where facts are not cited specifically, see for documentation, Constancio Pinto and Matthew Jardine's new book, "East Timor's Unfinished Struggle," for a thorough and most recent account. The foreword by prize-winning journalist Allan Nairn, who personally witnessed and was shot at the Dill Massacre in November 1991, is especially polignant.
In any event, following a successful coup in 1965, General Suharto came to power in Indonesia and, subsequently, from 1965-1967 killed more than 400,000 communists, dissidents, and ethnic Chinese. Since that time, the U.S. government has supplied Suharto with military intelligence and arms, including more than $100 million in 1994 ("Washington Post," March 18, 1995). In 1968, Phillips began operations in Indonesia (Phillips Petroleum Co. Indonesia) by signing a production-sharing contract with Pertamina, the state-owned Indonesia oil company run by Suharto's military regime (Phillips Annual Report 1968). Companies such as Mobil Corp., and later, Chevron and Texaco also signed deals with Pertamina at this time. On December 7, 1975, only 16 hours after meeting with President Gerald Ford and
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Jakarta, Suharto invaded East Timor, which had just gained independence from Portugal less than a week before.
During this time, U.S.-based oil companies have maintained operations in Indonesia, including Phillips, which profited throughout the 1980s, as its own annual reports indicate (1980-1989). In fact, as late as 1992 Phillips was producing 2,000 barrels of crude oil per day in Indonesia (annual report 1992), until Louisiana Land and Exploration Co. purchased its rights that same year.
Since 1975, more than 200,000 East Timorese have been murdered (one-third of the population), despite 10 separate United Nations resolutions condemning Indonesia's invasion and confirming East Timor's right to self-determination.
The simultaneity of the U.N. resolutions and Phillips oil operations contrasts sharply with the recent comments made in the "Kansan" by Rob Phillips, director of public relations for the company: "[Phillips] is very interested in, and follows very closely, developments concerning human rights in East Timor. And we're hopeful that efforts by the United Nations and others to resolve human rights in this part of the world will be successful."
with 1992, Phillips — along with Oryx Energy, USX/Marathon, Shell and Chevron — has been pursuing "a gas discovery in the Zone of Cooperation, jointly administered by Australia and Indonesia," to use Mr. Phillips's words.
These contracts were signed less than five weeks after the Dill Massacre of November 12, 1991, during which 270 men, women and children were murdered and buried in mass graves or thrown in the ocean ("The Talk of the Town," New Yorker, Dec. 9, 1991). Nonetheless, Phillips invested $58.64 million to pursue its contracts ("Oil & Gas Journal," Jan. 6, 1992) and operates two wells (Bayu-1 and Bayu-2) which, according to a company news release (Feb. 15, 1996), are producing millions of cubic feet of gas per day, plus thousands of
barrels of condensate per day.
At the 1995 Phillips annual shareholder meeting, company president Jim Mulva stated that Phillips expects to see profits from its wells within a year or two ("Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise," May 9, 1995).
It is important to note that the Zone of Cooperation is in violation of two different international resolutions unanimously adopted by the United Nations in 1970 and 1974, respectively (see for specifics, Roger S. Clark's article in the "Pace Yearbook of International Law," 1992). Unfortunately, the Indonesian government refuses to recognize the jurisdiction of the United Nations, which prevents the United Nations from intervening in the Zone of Cooperation.
Finally, regarding Phillips' connection to the University alluded to by Mr. Caldwell, the information is difficult to obtain.
Nevertheless, as of 1985, it can be verified that Phillips was a top donor to the University ("Kansan," April 25, 1985) and that the KU Endowment Association Board of Trustees was comprised of several former and then current Phillips executives. More recent data would require a Freedom of Information Search, although one can presume that the connection still exists given its historical and intimate nature. Perhaps the following lines from former KUEA president Todd Seymour summarizes the connection best: "For instance, [Seymour] said, petroleum companies like Phillips, one of the biggest contributors to KU, are interested in upgrading the quality of education in engineering so they have a 'greater selection of potential skilled employees to draw from ... Corporations are looking for better trained people. The more money they put into universities, the more secure their future is'" ("Lawrence Journal-World," June 22, 1980).
From the vantage point of 1997, Seymour's words are quite prophetic.
Jason Schroinor WaKeeney senior