Opinion
Kansan
Published daily since 1912
Jodie Chester, Editor Marc Harrell, Business manager Gerry Doyle, Managing editor Jamie Holman, Retail sales manager Ryan Koerner, Managing editor Dan Simon, Sales and marketing adviser Tom Ehlen, General manager, news advisor Justin Knupp, Technology coordinator
4A
Friday, December 4,1998
Editorials
University makes the right decision to recognize multicultural holidays
The University has taken a much-needed step in celebrating multicultural diversity. The Strong Hall trees of Christmas past have finally been replaced with banners that highlight six holidays. Christmas, Hispanic and Native American celebrations, Chanukah, Kwanzaa and New Year's are all represented on banners hanging in the Strong Hall rotunda. Such a change is for the better.
Mary Burg, executive assistant to the chancellor, said the banners were a step in representing the multicultural diversity of the University.
In past years, Christmas trees have decorated the rotunda. Last year, only poinsettias for the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau's Festival of Poinsettias adorned Strong Hall. This
For the first time, six holidays are represented in the rotunda of Strong Hall.
year, the poinsettias, tied with blue ribbons, and the multicultural diversity banners will celebrate the holiday season. Burg hopes that the addition of the banners will prompt more suggestions as to what the next step toward increasing cultural awareness should be.
As a joint effort between the Office of the Chancellor and the Office of the Provost, the banners were purchased from Diversity Communications, a catalog specialized in celebrating cultural diversity. Although people in the offices discussed placing symbols
such as menorahs, Christmas trees or Kwanzaa symbols in the rotunda, they feared these might be being stolen, Burg said. The banners were the most logical option they found and the most inclusive way for students' beliefs to be recognized.
The banners, a definite step in the right direction to the ultimate destination of multicultural awareness and acceptance, serve an important role for the University. Not only do the banners offer Strong Hall a festive appearance, but also they provide students with the opportunity to recognize and celebrate different cultures and holidays. Students should appreciate the efforts of the administration and offer them suggestions about how to make the recognition of multicultural holidays more prominent.
Emily Hughey for the editorial board
Housing should bend open-flame rule
Although it may not always seem that way, the University almost always aims for students' benefits when it creates and enforces policies. However, the administration and its policies are not perfect.
A conflict has arisen between Watkins Scholarship Hall residents and a University policy regarding holiday traditions. In this matter, the administration should take on the giving spirit of the season and allow a brief exception to its rules.
Watkins residents have a longstanding tradition of a holiday celebration during which the women walk through the halls carrying candles and singing carols. The Department of Student Housing,
KU administration should not interfere with Watkins Scholarship Hall tradition.
which until Monday night had never even know of the tradition, has decided to enforce a rule that bans candles in student housing.
The department's action is wellintended but overbearing. Administrators are showing concern for the chance that a fire might result from the carrying of candles through the building.
But from a safety standpoint, the ruling is unnecessary. Watkins Hall houses 40-50 women each year, and hundreds of lit candles
have been carried through it as a part of this tradition. Not one of those candles has caused a fire. This year, there will be 49 women involved in the practice — should a candle fall, surely there will be enough feet there to stomp it out.
The residents are correct in defending their tradition, and should the University stand by its decision, they should observe the practice regardless. The worst punishment they face is each being written up for violating a University code.
This tradition promotes unity in the scholarship hall while celebrating the holidays. The University should make an exception for this tradition.
Ronnie Wachter for the editorial board
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote "Men have become the tools of their tools." — Thoreau
Letters: 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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writer must be willing to be photographed for
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How to submit letters and guest columns
All letters and guest columns should be submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stufer-Film Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions.
For any questions, call Ann Prerep (apreremer@kansan.com) or Tim Harrington (tharrington@kansan.com) at 846-4810. If you have general questions or comments, email the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4810.
Perspective
Researchers, not teachers prioritized by University
In this essay I wish to raise an issue concerning the importance of teaching at the University of Kansas. Many will disagree with my views on this subject. I hope that they
will make their disagreement public. I think the issue I shall raise in this essay should receive wide and thoughtful public discussion, not only within the University but also outside of it.
This year, the philosophy department has authorization to search for two faculty appointments to replace some recent resignations. The search and selection process is an attempt to make the best appointment possible.
Don Marquis
Guest Columnist
what this comes to is elimination of all the candidates who apply but the best.
Many candidates are eliminated on the basis of the credentials they send to our search committee. Candidates who survive this process are interviewed at our national meeting and, typically, all but three are eliminated. The final three are brought to campus to meet all the departmental faculty, to meet the dean, to give a paper that represents their philosophical research and to be interviewed by the faculty. We then seek permission to make an offer to hire the candidate we think is best.
This fall, I proposed to my department that we make the direct observation of the teaching skills of our final three candidates a component of the hiring process. I suggested that we ask our candidates to send us a list of some classroom presentations on philosophical topics with which they felt comfortable. We would schedule one of those presentations for one of our introductory classes and observe and evaluate the candidates' teaching skills. I argued that it is important to judge a candidate's ability to make philosophical ideas clear to students who are philosophically naive.
I made this proposal in the form of a motion. The proposal was criticized by many members of my department. Some argued that direct evaluation of a candidate's teaching skills in the classroom was unnecessary because these skills could be evaluated on the basis of other parts of the interview. Others argued that the proposal would be difficult to implement fairly because not all faculty members could witness all the candidates' presentations and, perhaps, no faculty member could witness all.
Persons who have been hired recently in my department were polled. None of them had been asked by other universities to teach a class as a part of their interview process. My proposal was criticized on the grounds that direct evaluation of a candidate's teaching would make the University of Kansas appear to be Yahoo U in the eyes of others. After some discussion, the motion failed for a lack of a second. No one in my department supported it.
Here is my view of the matter. If good teaching is as important as good research at the University and as the KU administration pretends that it is, then if we evaluate our candidates' research skills as directly and as carefully as possible before they are hired, we should evaluate a candidate's teaching skills as directly and as carefully as possible. Is good teaching as important as good research? Well, the University would like others to think so. The chancellor hands out teaching awards at the beginning of the semester with great fanfare. We now have a Center for Teaching Excellence. If teaching is not as important, we should do the honest thing and make KU poli-
ies clear to the legislature and to parents who are considering sending their children to the University.
Do we evaluate our candidates' research skills as directly and as carefully as possible? Candidates are interviewed about their research several times. They don't send us just a paper. We don't rely only on their letters of recommendation. They are asked to read a paper in our presence, and they are asked to submit to questions concerning it. The argument of this paragraph and the last entails that we should evaluate the teaching skills of our candidates as directly and carefully as we examine their research skills. Therefore, we should observe directly their teaching in the classroom.
The analysis of this paragraph and the last can be developed in a slightly different way. The official view of my department is that the teaching skills of our candidates can be evaluated indirectly and by inference, while it is important to evaluate their research skills directly. It follows that we care less about good teaching than about good research.
i hope that the issue I am raising generates wide discussion. On one hand, if the teachers we hire are not as good as they might be, many students will suffer the consequences for 30 or 40 years. On the other hand, much academic research is quite arcane and/or trendy and is read only by the few others who wish to engage in abstract and irrelevant academic disputes. Thus, poor teaching has important consequences; often, poor research skills have few. In view of this, some mean-spirited people might argue that my department (and, I suspect, most departments at the University) have their priorities exactly backwards — that it is far more important to hire good teachers than to hire good researchers. However, I would not dream of being mean-spirited. I wish to argue only that teaching should be considered as important as research when it comes to faculty hiring.
Someone reading this might think that I am being unduly harsh to my colleagues in the philosophy department. I have no such intention. First, I surmise that this problem I am raising is quite widespread and concerns hiring policies at most departments at the University. Second, it probably is unreasonable to expect people who were hired using the present research-centered rules to see the merit of changing those rules. Instead, I am inclined to think that the KU administration is at the root of the problem.
If the KU administration really cared about good teaching, it could enforce a faculty hiring policy that would require that the teaching skills of job candidates be as rigorously evaluated as their research skills. There is nothing impossible about this. As far as I can tell, the KU administration really cares about affirmative action hiring and puts considerable pressure on departments to hire minorities. Thus, they could, if they really cared about good teaching, put far more pressure on departments to hire good teachers.
The issue that I have raised in this essay should concern not only KU faculty and administrators but also students (especially students), parents of present and prospective students, and legislators. Some will hold, no doubt, that my criticism of present hiring practices is unduly harsh. Others will hold, no doubt, that present hiring criteria are scandalously inadequate. I hope that members of both camps do not hesitate to make their views known, not to me privately, but publicly and vigorously.
Marquis is a professor of philosophy.
Feedback
Holiday spirit should be all year
In regard to the editorial, "Holiday Season Commences Too Early," I'd like to point out that the Bah Humbug Scrooges have also come out a bit too early. Even though businesses do capitalize off the holidays, holiday trimmings and whatnot tend to put most of us in the Christmas spirit. The one where we're a bit nicer to each other and a smile comes a bit easier.
My roommates and I are guilty of the crime of early Christmas decorating, but we feeling nothing wrong with feeling Christmas before its "appropriate" time. Tradition has it that the holidays should begin on Thanksgiving Day, but then again shouldn't the spirit of Christmas be year round?
Emily Vu Garden City junior
Hall should ditch turkey tradition
Before Thanksgiving, the
The Kansan suggested a possible solution to the problem — Ellsworth should donate as much food as it wastes. Donating food to those who need it is certainly as good idea all year round and especially during the holidays, but it can't make up for what's wrong with turkey bowling. Just because Ellsworth might donate food, it doesn't change that they are still wasting food. And it certainly doesn't change that turkey bowling promotes animal cruelty by teaching people to think about animals as unfeeling objects.
Here's a better solution:
Donate food and lose the turkey carcass bowling tradition.
Kansan editorial staff rightly criticized Ellsworth Hall's annual Turkey Bowling event for wasting food and acting in a manner inconsistent with the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Kansan is not the first to criticize the event for promoting insensitivity toward animals and serving as an embarrassing example of how, as Americans, we take our wealth and privilege for granted — even on Thanksgiving.
With help, United Way surpasses goal
On behalf of the KU United Way Committee, I would like to sincerely thank all of the KU community (students, faculty, staff, and retirees) who so generously donated to the United Way Campaign this year.
Michael Schmitt Harrisonburg, Va. graduate student
We have surpassed our campus goal, but more importantly, thousands of Douglas County residents will be the beneficiaries of your contributions. So from all who made the Rock Chalk Revue contribution so successful this past Spring to those who recently contributed via payroll deductions or through outright gifts - thank you!
Jack Fincham
KU United Way
Campaign Chair