Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Spencer Duncan, Editor
Lindsey Henry, Managing editor
Andrea Albright, Managing editor
Tom Eblen, General manager, news adviser
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Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
Wednesday, August 27, 1997
Kevin T. Frost/ KANSAN
Ranting
Hawk Week's fun and games fail to educate incoming students
Unlike many colleges across the state, the University of Kansas jumpstarts its entry into the school year with a week of activities aimed at orienting new students with the University. The name Hawk Week was coined for this week of events, but to many faculty and students, it is still known as Country Club Week.
Hawk Week began eleven years ago as an initiative on the part of the administration to keep students occupied so they would not fill their time drinking. Events such as Playfair, Beach and Boulevard, an ice cream social, the movie on the hill, convocation and Tradition's Night are aimed at introducing the University to students.
Unfortunately, the students who participate in Hawk Week events are usually the focused students, those already committed to studying and doing well academically. The students who could really benefit from the academic orientation to the University are the more active participants in Country Club Week.
Country Club Week is the party side of Hawk Week. Although Hawk Week activities seem to have somewhat diminished the consumption of alcohol, there is still a significant crowd of students bar-hopping the week before classes begin.
There may not be a real academic side to Hawk Week, however. While Hawk Week has some programs that focus on helping students overcome academic obstacles at a large University, it is not totally aimed towards academics. Most
of the Hawk Week agenda is focused on entertaining students and convincing them that while the University is large, it is not unfriendly.
This student-friendly approach to introducing students to Kansas causes difficulties when students arrive at their first large lecture, which can be overwhelming, or when their first problem arises.
If the University truly wants students to enter their first week of class totally prepared for real situations, they should rethink the focus of Hawk Week. Yes, the Hawk Week activities are fun and amusing, but they do not compete with the social atmosphere of Country Club Week. And as far as the academic side is concerned, Hawk Week might as well not exist.
Nicole Skalla for the editorial board
City slips in fixing students' sidewalks
As I was walking home one recent evening, my mind stumbled over a nagging question: Who in the hell is in charge of repairing the sidewalks in the "student ghetto?"
That area, which I would define as running from Massachusetts St. west to campus, bordered by 19th St. on the south and 9th street on the north, is full of ankle-twisting crevices in the sidewalks in front of the apartments and houses of many KU students.
Now, if I, with ample light and uninfluenced motor skills had problems navigating the cement slabs during this particular walk home, think what a drunken classmate in the nighttime hour must go through.
No wonder hiking boots are so popular in this town: Getting home is like a
damn Rocky Mountain adventure.
So I made a phone call to Mike Wilden, Lawrence city manager, to get the skinny on my sidewalk. He said that property owners are responsible for the upkeep of the sidewalks on the property they own. In other words, the craters in my front yard are my landlord's problem.
The next step is to send a written complaint to the city engineer, Terese Gorman, at P.O. Box 708, Lawrence, Kan., 66044. She will have someone look at the sidewalk in question, and, if needed, notify the property owner that they must make repairs. Owners are then given 60 to 90 days to repair the sidewalk.
The fair act would be to initially complain to your landlord. Nothing will come of that, but at least you tried.
If the property owner doesn't make the needed repairs, the city can eventually fix the sidewalk, and then bill the property owner.
Wilden did say that if there is a large number of complaints in a certain area, something is more likely to be done.
What I suggest is this: Get your neighbors to sign a single letter of complaint regarding your sidewalk and mail it to the city engineer.
Then, wait a few weeks for a reply and mail that same letter once a week until you get a response.
If having a safe walk from your front door to the street isn't enough to warrant sidewalk repair, then maybe your persistence is.
Bradley Brooks for the editorial board
Kansan staff
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round."
Muhammad Ali
**Letters:** Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must be 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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How to submit letters and guest columns
All letter and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Staufer-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 (justtail@kansan.com) at 864-4810. If you have generic questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Raving
Tuition cap a dream without senate support
Grey Montgomery
opinion@kansas.com
The Kansas Board of Regents' agreement to investigate the possibility of a tuition cap is a very small step in the right direction.
The implementation of a cap could halt the rapidly increasing reliance on students to pay the cost of providing higher education in Kansas.
The Board agreed to the tuition cap proposal in principle at its annual retreat on Thursday. No specific proposals were forwarded and no votes were taken. However, the Regents probably will become more concrete as they near submittal of their Fiscal 2009 by-
The Regents record on tuition indicates a need for a cap. In the past two years, the Board has made sincere efforts to keep tuition increases closer to inflationary increases. In June, the Board proposed a 2.8 percent tuition increase in Fiscal 1999, which followed a 4 percent increase in tuition this year. But the 10-year average is worse.
Since 1988, in-state tuition has increased by an average of 6.3 percent a year and out-of-state tuition has increased by an average 9.8 percent a year. And assuming the Legislature approves the Regents Fiscal 1999 budget request, which is a broad assumption, then 1999 will be the first year since 1989 that tuition increases have not exceeded CPI increases.
The Regents discussed linking the cap to the inflation rate, CPI or the cost-fee ratio. The cost-fee ratio is the percentage of the total cost of education that is paid by the student in tuition.
A good example of this has been the University's struggles to fund technology improvements. Technology slowly became a problem at Kansas as technology-related funding from the state has stalled in recent years. Now, state universities across the country are adopting 100 percent student-financed technology fees to resolve the deficiencies. Such proposals have been bounced around at Kansas, too.
Links to inflation and CPI are important, but links to the cost-fee ratio are necessary. Cost-fee ratios have soared since the late 1980s, indicating a reduced proportion of state funding in the cost of higher education. This trend lacks any reason, unless, of course, Kansans think that education is less important. I would hope that this is not the case.
And like it or not, don't be surprised if University administrators seek student support of student fees for other programs that the state has traditionally funded because the state falls short in funding. It's already happened in varying degrees in some of the University's schools, including the School of Law, where students pay a fee that was created in part to supplement faculty salaries.
During the 1980s, the Board maintained an unofficial guideline that students should not pay more than 25 percent of the cost of their education. This year, the Regents universities' students pay about 35 percent of the cost of their education. And at the University, stu
dents really take it on the chin, paying 43.6 percent of that cost.
To make up lost money from the state, universities have increasingly relied on fundraising and student fees to make necessary improvements.
Clearly, a 35 percent cost-fee ratio should be the maximum ratio allowed by the Regents and supported by students. That does not return us to the 25 percent cost-fee ratio Regents protected in the 1980s, but at least it stops the slide.
Problems of state funding are not going to be solved without substantial student involvement. The Student Legislative Awareness Board needs to have a greater influence in Topeka than it did during the 1997 legislative session. Don't get me wrong, I think SLAB has come a long way since its inception in 1994, but lobbying needs to go beyond a one-day SLAB lobby day if students are to be able to reverse any higher education funding trends.
I don't think legislators take students seriously enough, and why should they? We haven't exactly been the NRA. As a result, Legislative Director Samantha Bowman is going to have to step up. She is going to be one of the top two or three most important actors in Student Senate this year, depending on how well she does her job and how much volunteer support she gets from other students.
SLAB is going to have to devote a lot more time to Topeka than it has in past years.
If not, good ideas like a tuition cap and a cap on the cost-fee ratio will continue to be only good ideas.
Montgomery is a Junction City senior in journalism and political science.
Academic excellence? How about Sno Cones
Last Friday, staff columnist Michael Martin was snacking on a Sno Cone provided by the UnionFest (otherwise known as the Let's Place it Fem With Choup Balky Poll)
Let's Placate Em With Che when he broke a filling and passed out. In his delirium, he
Michael Martin
opinion@kansan.com
passed out. In his delirium, he dreamt he discovered the real first draft of Chancellor Robert Hemenway's convocation speech. It is presented here in its semi-fictional entirety:
Welcome, students. No; too traditional.
MMMBop. No; infectious, but too darn hip.
Welcome, all you party ani-
mals! That's it! Pause for
huge cheer; students love
administrative irreverence
almost as much as they love to PARTY DOWN). Mental note: you're targeting your audience here; students who are working their way through school and don't have time to party probably don't have time to attend convocation either.
I'm your chancellor and I just want to welcome you to the 132nd year of mediocrity at the University of Kansas. Last year we managed to stagnate for another two semesters!
Please excuse this long exposition, but you don't get the track record we have by approaching things quickly and directly.
For example, look no further than our treatment of the Graduate Teaching Assistants Union (for those freshmen out there, those are the people who teach most of your classes, that is, until approximately 20 percent of you drop out after your first year). We've repeatedly refused to meet their requests for a fair and equitable benefits package. We've brought indentured servitude into the twenty-first century! We've made it hip again! (pause again for huge cheer).
Now, as for those rogue critics who say we're being unreasonable on the issue, I respond: we're not the only ones with a hand on the cat'o'nine-tails! Look at the city of Lawrence. Better yet, ask any of your classmates who are struggling to pay linear tuition and living expenses on the $5-$6 an hour provided by most of Lawrence's fine retailers, which I encourage all of you're parents to visit after our ceremony tonight. Two words: Outlet Mall.
And we just want to let you know that we're once again teaming up with the City of Lawrence to suck more money out of your pockets by continuing our aggressive parking ticket campaign. Here at KU, we're leading the way by raising our previously unaffordable parking permit prices even more this year. Now, don't groan like that! How else can we subsidize football season tickets
and pass the generous savings on to you? (fight urge to wink).
But hey, let's not be defensive; let's concentrate on our strengths. I know we can all be proud of our recent ranking as the eighth-biggest party school in the nation. According to the eighth edition of The Gourman Report, that's significantly higher than our national ranking in undergraduate programs of anthropology, architecture, art, art history, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, drama, English, French, geology, history, journalism, linguistics, music, political science, psychology, Spanish, and pre-law.
And that's a whole lot higher than our national ranking in accounting, African-American studies, behavioral sciences, biochemistry, business administration, chemical engineering, classics, child psychology, communications, economics, film, math, philosophy, physics, radio/TV, and sociology — because we don't even make the survey at all! Nor did we make the list of the Top 50 Undergraduate schools in the nation.
So you may be wondering where your tuition money is going in lieu of initiatives to improve our academic programs. Well, we just purchased a $4 million jet, which I know almost none of you can actually use, but we are considering bringing it to campus so everyone (with vouchers, of course) can queue up to touch it. And you can bet that Sno Cones will be provided!
So much for the future; right now, we continue to bring you inadequately staffed, sized and equipped computer labs, a completely outdated enrollment system, and almost inobservable cultural diversity.
But we're working on that. Just look at Fall's "Timetable of Classes." On the cover photo, you'll see that minorities comprise 42.6 percent of the faces in the foreground. Now; granted, that's slightly higher than the actual percentage of ethnic minorities in the student body, which was $9.6\%$ as of last March, and that's a whole lot higher than the percentage of people you'll actually see on campus interacting with those outside their individual ethnic groups. But we firmly believe that propaganda is the first step to truth. Plus, it's more cost-effective than more diversity programs and recruiting efforts.
I see you're getting restless. Probably getting ready to go out and PARTY, eh? (anticipate cheer) Well, I'll wrap this up.
Let's get ready for another semester of stagnation. Remember — let's keep mediocrity off the football field and in the classroom, where it belongs! Good night and I am outa here!
Michael Martin is a Lenoxa junior in English and Journalism.